


By Alternate Death

by londonfalling



Series: the twin Castor and twin of Castor [2]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Body Horror, Brother/Brother Incest, Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Depression, Eventual Romance, Gore, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, Hell, Incest, It Gets Worse, Latin, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Plot Twists, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest, Slow Burn, Twincest, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2020-08-20 01:04:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 169,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londonfalling/pseuds/londonfalling
Summary: At this point his disinterest in everything hinders his decision-making process so much that he's outsourced it to a coin. It has a larger capacity for pesky little things like emotions and good judgement and probably has a more affable personality to it too.Alternatively: Dante descents to Hell (a DMC 2/ DMC 4 AU that does and doesn't follow game canon).





	1. i. Cut a Long Wish Short

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really like Dante and his crippling depression in DMC 2, so I've been wanting to write something about it for some time. Then I got the Aeneid book six verse “si fratrem Pollux alterna morte redemit / if Pollux by alternate death redeemed/reclaimed/bailed out his (twin) brother (out of the underworld)” stuck in my head; thus the name and general premises of this fic. Thanks, Vergil(ius)/Virgil.
> 
> Have some D1 angst before I can get any actual plot going.

His twin's strangely endearing interest in ancient lore notwithstanding, Dante hadn't ever been one to get caught up in the world of myths and legends. Sure, he'd liked it when he had taken the time to read it out loud to him when they were kids and he still had any to spare to him, but to be fair, he would've grudgingly listened to pretty much anything said in that voice, from phone books to occult curses. Though their relationship had been turbulent by most standards, he didn't really get it, personally; all that excitement for parricide and the virtue of dying young. From what he'd gathered, people read the old stuff because they could apparently still find some fundamental questions about life and being a person hidden in there between all the talk about being good for your homeland and assassinating any inconvenient tyrants − honestly, he always thought that his twin did it just because he was pretentious like that −, but he only got the dick jokes (there were so many!). That's why he had never puzzled over what the characters would feel like the day after such monumental occasions as angering gods that could raise the seas and scorch the earth or knocking up their own mother by accident. The day after they had slain their own brother.

Dante doesn't want to know things, in general. These things, in particular. Staring at the pool of bile he has just thrown up, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to experience living that day either.

He did commit that, yesterday. Fratricide. Today, he woke up with blood on his hands. Even when he could not see it, he felt it so vividly, his palms warm and the angry old scar throbbing violently like it was as fresh as the panic suddenly building up in his throat, even though he had a perfect recollection of the fact that the only thing the only thing the soul he had snuffed out had left behind was the other half of their amulet. There should be no blood at all, not this blood − so similar to his own and yet completely different. The cloying smell of it is heavy in the dim air of the room; iron, of course, but also something heady like musk and the familiar menthol hit of raw demonic power. He hates himself because even with all his agitation, it doesn't fail to make him somewhat turned on. Not that being shaken up and horny weren't the state he tended to end up in after interacting with him, but now the beat of it being wrong, wrong, wrong is just adding to his hysteria. Where is all the blood coming from when he didn't even bleed any, the thing his body had become not capable for that, maybe, he had, fuck, he had _killed him_ \--

No. It turns out it isn't panic down there, just plain ol' puke. Dante doesn't now how he's made it to the floor in time to hurl his guts and intestines out there like a civilized person instead of doing that on the bed. Demonic reflexes, most likely, or a full-body convulsion that has thrown him out of it. Would it really have mattered anyway? Because now he stands, shaking like a newborn calf, his hands and chin and feet covered in the spew even though he probably hasn't eaten anything in days and his stomach is still so full of sick that he can sense it writhe and churn there violently. The scent of his blood is still there under the acerbic layers of gastric fuels and he wonders if this is how losing his mind feels like. His body seems to be thinking it's dying, and the worst thing is that it's not, he's not.

If he curls into a fetal position here on top of his own vomit like he has half the mind to, he won't get up. It's a pretty thought, sort of.

When he is rinsing his body on autopilot − it doesn't feel like it belongs to him at all −, he isn't surprised to notice that there are no new scars, but the static going through him still picks up in volume anyway until it drowns out the shower running in the background. His skin is smooth and undamaged and this is all wrong too. Something like this should grant him a visible stigma he could hold on to. He is left with absolutely nothing this time and he wants to cry and laugh and he's run out of his hysterics so all he can do is continue washing out the suds until it's all just water flowing down the drain.

He doesn't smell gore and his dick probably isn't hard anymore.

Dante is distantly impressed that it gets worse when his heater has run out of hot water and he, having finally noticed he has been freezing for some time, gets out of the shower. He should clean up the floor too, but his skin is too tight and constricting to contain the need to see the concrete consequences of his fuck-up ballooning inside of him. If there's a time when he's ready to handle this, it isn't today, but the lack of marks lets him lets him keep on believing this isn't real when he knows in his bones it is. He could easily heal whatever Mundus dealt him, but when the only memento his brother is − was, was − willing to give him was an injury, he wants it.

Come to think of it. There must be a knife here, somewhere, he has lots of weapons gathering dust, doesn't he, or a sword, he has a sword, maybe even several of them, whichever wherever whatever -- He paces the room and can't find anything. He welcomes the panic which is rising again; something to occupy himself with is better than the alternative, he doesn't want to put his feet up and get comfortable and _think_ about it. Him.

He never meant to --

_ Has he been alive the whole ti--_

He would've never -- He --

V--

His leg connects with the jukebox before he can note that it's there. It − the jukebox, his leg, he himself? − makes a loud noise before it shatters. His leg hurts but he can't see if it's bleeding because he is wearing something − when did he put on shoes again or did he never take them off −-

Fuck, there must a knife here.

Dante drags himself out of the room and latches on to the first object he sees. Lo and behold, it's a chest, and when he has dislodged the first three drawers, he finds an arm nestling between the dirty socks and the Ark of the Covenant and whatever. It's a tanto, because of course it is. The scabbard discarded somewhere, Dante laughs and chokes as he plunges the knife into his arm that does seem to be naked. It contacts with bone, probably. He twists it and hears a squelch but feels nothing, nothing at all.

His poems and stories never depicted this. And they often got it wrong in other ways too; he seems to remember a poem which claimed that, for someone who had seen all kinds of monsters and shit with dry eyes, there was no need to fear the gait of death, when it's really the other way around, or at least was. He supposes there is nothing for him to fear anymore.

Be as it may though, washing his problems away with alcohol is something the poems would have likely approved of. When Trish and Lady find him, he is three sheets to the wind and still laughing, the tanto a mangled, charred piece in the corner of the room and a cohort of empty bottles gathered to a wordless wake around him. It's not poetic but it's something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Dante alludes to is Horace (Odes 1,3).  
\--  
Quem mortis timuit gradum  
What death's gate fears one  
qui siccis oculis monstra natantia,  
who, eyes dry, (has seen) swimming monsters  
qui vidit mare turbidum --  
who has seen the sea storm --


	2. ii. In Unfortunate Fires

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dante's still not doing so hot.

His panic attack died down today. Or maybe it was yesterday, Dante's not sure. The looks he received from Lady and Trish when he could eventually hoist himself up to his feet and sway on them a little without falling into another bout of howling or back to a slump on the floor spelled out: “Situation approximately normal, all fucked up. Check up on you tomorrow.” That doesn't mean anything, though; it might have been yesterday.

This coping thing is shaping out to be a doozy.

What he imagines to be day three of the new normal comes and goes much in the same in the same vein as the first. He uncorks a bottle as soon as the taillights of his guardians with their well-meaning but ultimately futile efforts have disappeared from sight, the tremors spilling some of it all over him until his buzz is thick enough. It doesn't exactly get easier after that, but alcohol and the ritual of consuming it help him keep his mind as carefully blank as possible. He can look at his hands, one pouring another shot and the other delivering it to his lips, and only be relatively distantly aware of the things they've done. It's less acute that way, like a lingering bad dream instead of the indisputable clarity he's faced with if he's not keeping his mind engaged in stuff like physical stimulus and discomfort. He's not entirely successful − the stains state he's bled a lot at some point, and even that can't keep the nightmares at bay, not completely −, but what options does he have here? He can channel his inner angsty teenager and cut his flesh into lace, but in his state blood's only going to agitate him and make everything sharper. He doesn't need that.

(_He didn't need to say yes to Trish and the mission, yet he did, and he has only himself to blame_.)

On what could be the fourth day he's mostly conscious and dreadfully lucid, though, wonder of wonders. It's a brave new world and he's not by any means equipped to deal with it.

Since his business partners have finally left Dante in peace to wallow in his own misery and filth − he suspects the latter offends their delicate sensibilities more than the former −, this time he's alone when the hangover hits him through the thin layer of sleep. Just as well; it's not like his poor consciousness is likely to bestow him with anything pleasant. He hasn't got enough data yet to determine if his dreams are worse than being awake (_alive_) or if it's another miserable tie. Great options there; either he sleeps his life, such as it is, away or then just chases snatches of it while coming up with something to fill the endless hours in between with. He needs to get to that soon, actually: something to concentrate on when the aftereffects reside. It's bad now, which is as good as it gets these days, but it's not going to last long. Thanks for the genes, daddy dearest.

He might as well take stock of his surroundings, map out which booze stash he could raid next. It's looking rough to even his standards. The desk upended and all its contents scattered around it like a pool of blood; the wall panels a constellation of scorch marks, various liquids and deep lacerations made by claws he doesn't remember coming out; the stench of something decomposing. It's probably not him. He can only guess what his own appearance's like. Then again, they say demon blood hides multiple sins. In this case that might be literal − good that he tends to wear red. If only he had any clothes on currently.

Shower wasn't such a great hit last time and he'd likely feel obligated to wash his hair if we went there. The off-chance of catching himself in the mirror with his wet hair slicked away from his face − well, seeing it at all, but some things are still worse than others, which could be a comforting thought for some − isn't a can of worms he feels like opening now. He's queasy and most likely not done regurgitating yet. Life is so exciting when everything has become a potential Pandora's box, primed to explode in his face but without the dignity and magnanimity to finish him off while at it. Dante makes a shoddy Pandora, though, he's got all the evils and none of the hope she was lucky enough to trap. He later finds out it's a moot point anyway: the mirror already lies in a million deadly little pieces on the bathroom floor. It takes a maybe surprising but mostly just depressive amount of time to notice them cutting into his feet. He has no boots on this time, convenient. It's the blood that does it, that and the twisted disappointment of not getting to experience the bad trip or whatever it was from day one again − the vertigo makes a comeback with a vengeance. He's freaking out because he's not hallucinating. He's missing a mirage now. Things are wild.

(_In a sense, isn't that exactly what he's been doing all his adulthood? The brother he's thought he knew would've never teamed up with Mundus, and yet the living breathing fleeing version of him did join the enemy rather than stay. God, he needs a drink_.)

The throwing up is getting real old real fast and this floor is never getting clean again. It's pure alcohol in there, it should not burn like this coming back up.

The billowing nausea he's gurgling down reminds him of the one time he, after a long night of gazing into his glass in one of the less than reputable holes in the wall he used to frequent in his late teens, toyed with the idea of bedding a man, some complete stranger that would not ask any unnecessary questions. A careless thought, but now that it was in his head, it felt necessary, unavoidable. In the poor light of the place he let his gaze move about aimlessly, half inattentive, taking in shoulders cut too thick, legs too short, lips not full enough. Not even poor substitutes, not until his eyes landed on a slender guy with the delicate hands of a pianist, who, if he took another swig, tilted his head and squinted his eyes just so, almost moved with the same grace and poise he would've in a considerable state of inebriation and with both his legs broken. He considered the glass and the possibility slowly; his face against the wall, hands up and ass out, hands on his hips. The heat of another body between his legs. If he told him not to make a sound, with only their steamy breath becoming one in the chilly night, Dante could think of him and then on the edge pretend for a minute, just long enough to get off and get by. He could do it − he was suddenly sure of it −, if he had just one drink and one notch of longing more. But when he finished the swill he could not tell the man he'd been eyeing earlier apart from anyone else present; it could've been anyone, from the bloke with too dark eyes and a mouth bereft of any sensuality to the one who looked like he would burst into tears if Dante pushed him to kiss him with the ruthlessness he needed. He scanned the crowd without really taking anything in, cold sweat building on his temples and the back of his neck; the backslash of it all going to hell so abruptly made him reel, heart in his throat. There was no reason why he should feel so sickened and guilty because of this when he imagined doing racier things with his own twin on the regular, when he pictured everything with details more graphic and obscene and, without fail, came to them. This was something even the basest of creatures should be capable of and yet there he was, blue balls, limp dick and gnawing shame. The talk of them being above the humans was clearly bullshit, even a fucking mollusk could do this, evolution had failed him --

So much for having a healthy, functional sex life of any kind. The bottom line is, he's kind of bad at existing.

Dante's never been actively suicidal, but if he isn't now, he's not far. Most of his life, it has only been like this: he's tired and he'd prefer to stop existing whenever, but he's not actively seeking death. Well, it sounds wrong somehow, put like that. He can't even seek death, not really, because there have ever been only a few things on this side of reality that could damage him permanently and, he suspects, not that many in the underworld either. The number has been declining recently, too. He doesn't fully know why he doesn't actually get to simply killing himself off, but he doesn't. It probably has something to do with his brother so he doesn't want to examine it too closely − there be dragons and heartbreak. Maybe it's because he doesn't deserve it, the easy way out. Whatever his twin had been through after he had hit it off with Mundus so well, it hadn't been fun; he never got the quick exit, so what right does his killer have to that? The body − he has difficulties with thinking it was his body, even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary − Mundus had played with had been contorted into impossible shapes and all his organs had been replaced with solid ichor. Maybe he had even liked it. Maybe it had made him feel powerful. Maybe it felt good to literally tower over Dante, just like he had always done in other things, if he could still comprehend things like that in his shiny new form.

It could be him. Could just be revenge, though. Dante guesses even ripping Mundus' gory decaying flesh to pieces and blowing the fucking island up wasn't enough to get rid of him for good. It's not much of a raison d’être but it could be his, if he managed to make himself feel the fury which keeps escaping his grasp. If Mundus comes knocking tomorrow, he will put up a fight to the death because it's the one thing he's ever managed to do correctly, but it's not like he's losing any sleep over the chance of losing. It's his mistake thinking there's be a point to it all.

It's not like he had any plans before, planning a nice quiet retirement after a fulfilling career of beating the shit out of anything demonic that comes across him while secretly hoping it might let him out of his misery. He's just − drifted. Yeah, his grand goal in life has been to at some point become, hopefully, reunited with his brother in the sense that they would then be as dead as fucking rocks. He knows not to hope for things, not after he's witnessed the impossible and killed it dead.

(_It's a lie, it's a lie_, Dante knows this, fuck. Once upon a time, he did have plans. Aspirations. Daydreams, castles built on air, pipe dreams. _They would, of course, get married sometime, because that's what grown-ups did when they loved each other really much. Mother had said so so it must've been true. He probably would've never put up with wearing a puffy white dress even if Dante asked him to, even if he'd been really pretty in it, prettier than the dress and all the decorations and even Mother, though if he told him he'd be pissed and make this expression Dante secretly thought really cute. He sometimes had to stop whatever he was doing and just look at him, wondering how he could look beautiful in a way his image in mirrors and shiny cutlery didn't even when they wore the same face. He would look and quiet down, all the extra energy curling inside him and purring calmly like a happy cat instead of making him jump the walls until he'd tell him stop staring and they'd end up fighting._

_And if he still does this, transfixed and overcome with fragile hope, when they meet ten years later; if he still believes there's a happy ending to be had here, for them, that they could make each other happy, that he'd let him − well, what was he at eighteen if not a child still_?)

Dante's not used to being alone with his thoughts. He doesn't like it, but he doesn't like Lady and Trish being here either. It's slowly dawning on him that he's run out of alcohol, though. He could just pick up the phone, ask them. They would bitch and add it to his tally with a cruel and unusual interest, but they'd do it if he asked. Being sober is indefinitely worse than having to communicate with people briefly, so why's this so hard? It's stupid, the phone can't hurt him now. He's already gotten the grieving widower deluxe experience without the married part of it. What's the worst they could say, that his brother's dead? He already knows this.

(_Not that he necessarily wants to hear it when the distorted voice he made when Dante drew Rebellion through him is still ringing in his ears. It felt like there was no body to pierce, only armor, but there was still a sickening, moist sound when he yanked the sword free, a creeping sense of terror pelting under his skin. He had won, he'd bested the creature and he should be free of the lingering dread it evoked, why was it amplifying, why was there no blood he's heard it and felt it worm inside of his own spine, why was the dying grimace on its unsettling face reminiscent to a smile he tried his best to forget_ \--)

It's too early to worry about that, anyway. He'd need to pick himself up from the floor first.

He could at least dress himself.

He could've dropped all this years ago and moved on. But he's committed to this misery, he's true and ever faithful until death do them part. When he's never been able to swear his undying loyalty to his brother, he can promise himself to his ghost, learn to be in love the knowledge that he loved someone, once. In turn, misery loves company. He should be glad something is so willing to remain his companion.

Dante tries to empty his mind; it seems to be about as successful as emptying his stomach to the degree that there's nothing left to purge. Metaphorically shoving his fingers down his throat, he tenses and relaxes and counts to thousands and yet the thoughts are still there.

This is it, his lot in life. There's really no reason to get up, so down he stays.

Is this him getting better or worse?

\-- 

At some point he regains his access to booze, so there's still no need to leave the office. It's nice on the absolute rock bottom, he tells himself. Floor zero. No wind, steady ground; nowhere for people he gives a shit about to jump, if he had any. If only his fucking hands would stop shaking.

Things change and they don't. Dante gives up the laughing and takes up drinking in earnest. The drinking is going well; while the amount of vomit on places where it's not supposed to appear hasn't really changed from earlier − if he's sober enough to pray to the porcelain god, the chances are he's sober enough to think − the amount of collateral damage has been going down after he burned half of the office down in his stupor somewhere around day five. He still wakes up disappointed that his body's smart enough not to let him choke to death by his own spew. Or not smart enough, whatever. It's hard to determine whether the shakes and the nausea are there because his healing factor already has to work overtime just to save the liver he keeps marinating and it has to neglect its less vital duties or because he's simply that fucked up. Luckily they either go away or he stops noticing them when starts early and stops only when he passes out.

Well, that bit about collateral damage, it's a lie. He's having some trouble with chronology. His memory's decided to fill the all the available storing space with glass-sharp images of some of his all-time favorites it keeps flashing at any inopportune moment. He can even loop the film backwards if he adjusts his focus correctly, if he's hit by a spell of wanting to torture himself in a particularly bittersweet way; here's his brother, healing his palm with a kiss of Yamato and swinging back to him; here's Rebellion pulled out from chitin plate covering what passes for a stomach for the Angelo, leaving the shell intact (_Rebellion came away_ clean --); here's his face relaxing from an ugly snarl when he tells him he's missed him. The flashbacks keep him occupied, so it's easy to disregard things like having to relocate after _Devil Never Cry_ had started to collapse, missing half its walls. Dante's not sure what happened there. The first and last thing he remembers is standing outside for the first time in a while and thinking he's supposed to be upset.

Or then that's not entirely true either. It's just -- He hasn't been getting any vivid illusions in a wakeful state that cannot be explained by alcohol since the first incident, which has surprisingly given reason for anxiety as well. It's another piece of his brother gone, Dante supposes. It stands to reason that his libido should be gone with it too − it's not like he's ever been able to get off to anything other than the obvious. Yet when he had stumbled upon the slashed glove he had apparently unearthed while drunk, his pants became as tight as his throat. It's a dead machine with nothing happening upstairs, but it's wired this way and sometimes the wires connect. The circuit closes; Dante, a memory, a catalyst, an unholy trinity, Pavlov and his dogs. He rubbed his cock red, dry and furious − if he was quick about it, maybe his brain wouldn't catch up. It worked until it didn't and then he was retching, reaching his devil trigger faster than his climax.

It would be nice if things could unfuck themselves for once in his live. If he could have one thing to be simple, even this. But his body's not his to wield, a dead man has been claiming the ownership of it forever and a day, even though he has never wanted it. Is it weirder by human standards that all his wet dreams have been about his twin or that the said twin starring in them has been dead or at least presumed to be so by him for most of the time he's been having them?

Morrison takes pity on him and arranges him a new place. Dante's grateful, maybe even says so. He's back to his routine when the girls come to check the digs out. He doesn't know why they keep looking so surprised to find him prone and drunk, they should be used to Dante in his natural habitat by now. It's the same shit he's been doing since they met, only more pathetic. It doesn't differ that much from earlier, except that there's now two persons to shepherd him instead of one. They can take turns keeping an eye on him now. Quaint.

“I got tired of picking your lock every time,” Lady says, stepping gingerly over a particularly nasty pile of bottles, shards of glass and something that looks like the last contents of his cupboards after they've partially gone through a digestion process. He doesn't recognize what it exactly was and if it had been edible in the first place − doesn't matter, there's no way of him stomaching anything anyway. Trish doesn't bother climbing her way closer, she just crosses her arms and leans against the door frame. She looks like she wants to say something but thinks better or it. Dante's glad. “So I took your spare key, because you don't seem like you need even your regular one any time soon.”

He croaks something in answer. Look who's being cooperative today.

“Are you alright?” Lady asks, clearly uncomfortable but bravely fighting it. Whether it's due to his considerable state of undress or the situation in general is anyone's guess. Ladies.

“No,” says the booze.

“I don't know why you keep asking him that,” Trish says. Funny how seeing her used to hurt before but not any longer.

“It makes me feel more useful,” she sniffles.

It's not survivor's guilt when he's not surviving, they don't say. But they think it and he agrees.

It's for their own good that Dante keeps them at an arm's length. If he cares, they'll either combust spontaneously or someone smites them down because that's what happens to anything that he has any kind of emotional connection to, a fiery death. Though it's not only his altruism talking. The other issue is that there's no explaining him without the phenomenon that was his brother. They were there, they've both seen it all fall apart and witnessed the aftermath, and yet he doesn't even know where to begin, so he doesn't. 

\--

Dante does run out of money eventually; it's actually sooner than later with his habit being kind of expensive to sustain and all that. Sick leave spent, he goes back to work. The lack of food doesn't bother him, though he liked eating back when he could draw pleasure from things. He can stand not having water and electricity or even the roof on top of his head, too, but he could do with the liquor.

On the first mission they take together, Trish's closed expression tells him she's doubting his ability to fight. To be contrary he makes it quick, merciless and flashy, and if he's out of breath at the end of it, it doesn't matter, he can still slay demons and it's better than what he's expected. Lady and Trish generously look the other way when he throws up the spirits he's been inhaling from his flask − it's a routine now, he's professional and efficient about it. It's good, really.

The killing goes without a hitch, but deciding whether to take up a job or not proves to be difficult once he can afford to be a bit picky. The answer comes in the form of a sweaty nervous guy whose cellar Dante has just freed from demonic mice. The guy asks him if he could pay in tokens − he's an artisan, you see, and while he's real grateful and all, the money's real tight now, you know, and he could customize them to his liking too. Dante doesn't even blink. Expect nothing, be surprised by nothing. When he is handed a sample coin, he weighs it in his hands. It's kind of flimsy and cheap-looking, the relief on it barely distinguishable when he turns it in his fingers. “Sure, if the coin says so. Heads or tails?” And that's how he walks away from the mission with several hundred tokens emblazoned with the logo of his business. By the time Morrison comes to him with an excursion to some place called Vie de Marli, he's made a habit of letting a coin speak for him. It's heads, so he goes. “Devil May Cry,” the new neon lights mock him when he closes the door behind his back, tinting his skin raw pink. The thing is, it's a lie too up there (he has had a lot of those, lately). False advertisement. He hasn't cried a single tear since the first time, although he wants to now, what with the fact that he has to categorize the times he has killed the only person who could set him free chronologically.

He's lived − been alive, existed − far longer without him than with him, by now.


	3. iii. Funeral Pyre of a Pious Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the plot's sake, there's a bigger distance here between the starting point and the place where Dante meets Lucia and Matier than in the game. Also; how is this thing already 10K and we haven't even made it to Hell yet :D

Dante's halfway to bumfuck nowhere when his contact person changes plans on the fly. It's not like he cares as long as he's getting paid, apparently even in worthless knick-knacks, so he agrees to meet her at a museum somewhere north of where the island is located even if it adds a day and a half to his initial plans. Look, Mom, he's not a complete barbarian; he's doing culture now. Big brother'd be proud if he hadn't also taken up killing his relatives and thus effectively silenced all his opinions on his civilization for good.

He hasn't been let in on any schemes for this mission, boldly assuming there are any − all Morrison had to tell him was that there's a woman who wants some demons dead, which is fine and dandy but doesn't really narrow it down any −, so he's coming in blind. Doesn't really bother him, he's had worse. He kind of dislikes large, looming buildings with what he, a Philistine and a boor, thinks are gothic features now, so it's a relief to find out the place is quite small and shaped differently than some cathedrals of his past. Like, it spreads more sideways than towards the sky and it's more about rounded shapes and domes than angular spires. There are plenty of decorative friezes on the wall, visible even in the dark, the style maybe more antiquity than your regular Christianity with crucified messiahs hanging on crosses and peasants wailing at them − there are togas and shit, plenty of haughty posturing. Something like that.

It has served as a church at some point in history, most likely, it has that pious air to it. Dante wonders if he's a heathen enough to be immolated by all the holiness, but enter he must. He could walk in through the main doors like a normal person, but he suddenly wants to make believe there is something left of the man he was in his teens, the balls and not the blues, obviously. So he makes a big flashy sacrilegious entrance by crashing through the circular stained-glass window on the roof and is happy to get drawn into combat immediately, even when the opponents are not really worthy of the effort and don't appreciate his stylish showtime maneuvers. His contact seems flustered, most likely by his dramatics, so he handles the game by himself. He doesn't have to break out his sword because the fight is over in seconds, the floor a molt of feathers, blue demon blood and purple-tinted shards. To his defense, one window was already broken when he got here. The two of them get acquainted by having a friendly little stand-off, which is happily resolved when Dante shoots the last demon that has decided upon a suicide attack. Weak.

It's a weird place for a museum, not that he's been to that many before. Looking around, there are no helpful plaques to explain to him or any other confused guest what the fuck he's looking at, and to be honest, there's not that much to see. Maybe the actual sight here is the building itself, who knows. Bit of a letdown, that. He would sure feel cheated for paying to visit it, so it's good he's on the clock now. No crosses, though; maybe that's why he's currently not on fire. The room is scantly littered with antique statues instead. There doesn't appear to be any conscious thought put into their placement. Old Egyptian kings, a Cupid with a disproportionally big head, a composition of a naked, distressed man with tentacle-like snakes slithering around his legs and torso that looks like it could get to weird sexy times in the immediate future. There are some busts of serious dudes with various headgear like vines and funky leather caps around too − could be poets. His twin'd probably have enjoyed this shit, or at least enjoyed criticizing Dante's ignorance of this kind of high-brow stuff. Under a pompous arch, among other old things that should be collectively forgotten stands, of course, a fucking Mundus, nowhere near his actual size but with all the condescension and airs of a giant with delusions of grandeur, and maybe, just maybe this is a ride he should get off of, because the worthless lump of stone is doing all kinds of distasteful things to him. He's Dante, he tells himself, and he's really pushing his thirties now and in a corner of the world he's never been to before; he's not twenty eight and wandering through the maze of the castle only to end up facing the sculpture again and again until he crosses a line he can't retrace his steps from.

His contact interrupts him with a cough when he's stood frozen long enough; there they go, she has the upper hand this time. She's a woman of few words, which is something he can appreciate. He can work with that. He goes for a manner more relaxed than what he feels like. “You called?”

It's too easy to rattle him with barely a sentence, though. “Son of Sparda,” she says, and wow, fuck, he's just found a new and exciting way the universe can pour salt into his wounds. The moniker is as familiar as ever, but it hasn't chafed this way before; he hasn't really paid attention to the fact that it's all there's left now, a son, an heir, a spawn. It's not an honorific, it's a reminder. Stark, grim, undeniably true. A singular son where there used to be a plural, even though in his heart of hearts he always used to believe the two of them should've been one unit; careful what you wish for and all that. Becoming one permanently probably wouldn't have worked out even with his shady black magic things, but they could've at least shared a single life (_a single bed). _Dante could've taken him hunting demons with him, finishing the fiends off in their perfect fluidity and then getting to the main course of crossing swords with each other. Returning home together, after. Books and a jukebox blaring songs from Mom's evenings, his brother reading him poetry in the warmth of their blankets and shared body heat, conversations about nothing and everything long into the night, and fuck, now he's stuffing his dead sibling into the billowy wedding gown again and refusing to accept that the rigor mortis has made it impossible for his body to fit into it, to bend that way, and his skin is chalkier than the white fabric, that it is an altar but one used for funeral rites and not unholy matrimonies. Dante's a grave robber, he keeps dragging the corpse up from six feet under for a spin and yet it's his own tomb he's digging all the while. He should leave the dead be and stop dishonoring their memory with his dirty, shameful jerk-off fodder. It's distasteful, like pissing on a tombstone, to claim that he would've wanted any part of it − even the fighting, when he chose to fling himself into hellfire even when he still had fight left in him, when he still could have bested him.

(_So much for them moving to some place where no one knew them and would be none the wiser if they kept to themselves, had their IDs faked and Dante grew a hideous full-face beard his twin'd always bitch about. Dante at eighteen, blinded by hormones and love and wild hope, sometimes eyes jeweller's windows, the future gleaming tentatively just beyond his fingertips, just the other side of the glass, as bright and precious as the fine metals and stones on display. Ten years later, the half of their amulet wrought in gold is just as shiny in his hands and he gets it, he feels something small break; this is him being punished for being so fucking greedy.)_

It was easier being Tony Redgrave, in a way; it had no strings nor memories, fond or bad, attached to it − he could roam the streets empowered by his red-hot vendetta against any and all devils in peace, mostly safe from inconvenient flashbacks in the shell of his jaded cynicism and justified hatred. Never mind that is was easier also because he didn't think of himself as a killer yet despite slaying loads of things, because he hadn't murdered anything that mattered, and that says many unpleasant things about him as a person. (_Would he be this fucked up if it was something else that put him to death? Difficult to be sure; his arrogance doesn't let him believe anything else, anyone else, could've_. _Had to be him._) There's still a lingering sense of wrongness when he hears his own given name pronounced, too; it doesn't sing the way it should, it's not spoken like it's the only thing worth of saying in the heat of the moment, in the thick of the battle. He bristles and falters but she's already leaving.

Lucia, not unlike most people in his life, seems to prefer communicating with her weapons only, so Dante sets out to follow her dagger to the coast of the isle. What he figures to be their next meeting spot is the southernmost point of the entire coast; as of this moment, he's up north and doesn't know what he anticipated. He doesn't feel like flying to his new destination, and while Lucia seemed to be in hurry to get away from him, it's becoming a completely normal reaction to him and it's not indicative of her actual hurry to get things done. This is well-known Sargasso area, so swimming's not an option either if he wants a chunk of his focus to remain on the mission and not on happy island retreats he's had the pleasure to tour in the times gone past. A boat ride is in order then, if he manages to find a ship that's willing to travel there. Surprisingly difficult, what with the demons and states of emergency now − this city, or rather a town, a small one, is housing a lot of refugees from Vie de Marli, and the evacuation efforts are still going strong. When he is scouting the dusty streets, the wind swirling reddish sand around his coattails, he sees a lot of makeshift shelters and tents and the solemn air of those who have had the rug swept under their feet when they thought they had life all figured out. There's not that much tourism here − why would there be, there's not a whole lot to do −, so no handy cruises to take him there, and the fishermen he speaks to in hopes of hitching a ride look like they are seconds away from spraying him with holy water (not actually fatal to half-breeds, just stings like a bitch in large quantities). Is it his admittedly gloomy outfit and general looks or the fact that he has no idea how to make convincing human expressions with his face nowadays? He's pretty sure he hasn't been growling at them or anything, he's just getting so far removed from humanity that basic interaction is more and more beyond him. Their delightful heart-to-heart leaves him exasperated and worn out. Nevertheless, he thanks them and wishes them a good day just to show himself he can put more than two words together without exposing his fangs and takes a left, burying his hands deep in his coat.

A pair of kids almost run into him. A boy and a girl, likely the same age or at least very close, charmingly ruddy cheeks and rustic hairdos. They flinch and pause their chatter. He hears the boy whisper something loudly to the girl's ear in the local language he doesn't speak − he knows it's a derivate of Latin and that's precisely where his curiosity ends. The girl gasps, afraid, and hurries them forward. When they are outside of the hearing range of a real person, the girl laces his fingers into hers and kisses his cheek daintily, says something gently rebuking. Dante looks at their backs when they walk to the direction he came from until they disappear behind another corner, bickering and laughing again.

Right. A swig of booze first and then he's contacting the evacuators. They, amazingly, arrange him a cabin in a small shipping vessel that's heading out for some continent more south but sticks close to the coast because of some larger demons that inhabit the local high seas. It has the potential to be a decent fight, but the ship's not up for it and he still has someone paying his way, so he boards the bucket and tries to prepare himself for boredom. Then again, Dante hasn't spent that much time offshore in his adulthood and none in his boyhood; it should be nice neutral ground with nothing to restore prior traumas to life.

The crew, suspicious and superstitious, won't let him have anything to do with running the ship. Good instincts, he wouldn't and doesn't trust Dante either. The sailors are starting to get antsy when he keeps prowling around the deck for something to do, so he asks one of them for a book. After some flailing sign language, he's handed a beaten copy of _Moby Dick _for his troubles, the irony of which is not lost even to him.

Having retreated to the cabin to the relief of the men, he flops onto the creaky bed and flips the volume open. It's in the same gibberish he heard around the town and how he's expected otherwise is a mystery for the ages. A quick browsing tells him there are no pictures to keep him company, so he tries to parse the language for a while. He's pretty sure one of the words in front of him is _erection, _which is remotely interesting; he had no idea this was a dirty book. Nothing else on the page stands out despite his efforts − fine, it can keep its secrets then. When he peruses the book for anything potentially amusing, he notices there's a dedication of sorts on one of the blank pages at the end of the book. The faded ink and the outdated, unnecessarily curly handwriting are a pain to read, but it doesn't take long for his blood to turn cold. It's Latin and it's clearly a poem, probably even in that hexagon-whatever meter that flowed so easily from his brother's lips. He should let it lie, yet a morbid curiosity, a masochism instilled somewhere near his trachea, urges him to taste the words in his mouth.

_Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus_

_advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,_

_ut te postremo donarem munere mortis_

_et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem._

_Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum._

_Heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi,_

_nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum_

_tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,_

_accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,_

_atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale._

Bitter and harsh. It's familiar, too, he recognizes the verses and thinks he's heard it, even though he has forgotten the meaning. He can understand enough, that it's sad and there are dead brothers and plenty of crying and goodbyes for forever going on.

If he strains his imagination enough, he can hear it replayed in his ear, low and dark. “_Frater. Brother.” _He doesn't. He strains his ankle instead by hitting a large metal crate lying in the corner with this foot, likely spooking the humans further with his racket. His life's becoming a drinking game: take a shot every time something completely insignificant reminds Dante of him and kicks him in the fucking dick. Why resist it? He nurses his pocket flask and thinks of whales.

Evening gives way to the night, eventually. It seems that he hasn't been rattled enough on this trip; there's a distant rumbling beyond the horizon, then a bolt of electricity. He hates this. Just like there is nothing unnatural about darkness − it's just absence of light and he can always trigger and use his other eyes to cut through it with his sight −, there is no reason to be unnerved by lighting as a grown man. When they were young, he hadn't experienced loss to such a degree that he would've known to be scared of anything during the day. Sparda didn't count since he was an asshole and Dante never knew him well enough to miss him. Nighttime, however, was a different story. From an early age he could remember having a vivid sense of some dark, maleficent energy lurking outside the reach of his nightlights, threatening and patient. It often poisoned his dreams, but his twin was there every time, somehow always ready to wake him and lure his mind back to the sun with his tales and rhymes. After Mom decided they were too old to share a bed and tried to wean them out of their co-dependency, curling into his bed and holding onto him until he would feel safe again was prohibited; he should've run to Mom or soldiered on on his own.

Dante had thought he was mostly over it ages ago. Sure, rain and thunder tasted sour in the aftermath of the tower; he would look at his own reflection in puddles, hair falling to his eyes, and wonder if Narcissus was in fact a misunderstood twin in mourning. Yet when the purple light hits the small window of the cabin, he gets the familiar feeling there's something waiting for him outside, that it's a challenge and he's not meeting up to it. He gets that a lot.

If he had understood her when she tried her best to tell them they were too close, that it was unnatural and unhealthy, would they have ended up here?

\--

There's not an actual harbor on this side of the isle. When a cautious seaman explains him with his grunts and less than polite hand signs that they've arrived where they're supposed to drop him off, he gathers his gear and feels unexpectedly good about the prospects of getting out, breathing fresher air. Fewer chances for cabin fever out in the open. He briefly considers tossing the _Dick _overboard to sleep with the fishes and creepy disjointed skulls out of spite yet decides against it. Maybe other people have had brothers too. Maybe they've even lost them. So, it's just his own body and equipment he lobs into the ocean, water crisp and bright blue against the sunlight on the surface.

Dante swims because the only alternative to that is sinking, and no way he's going to do that in front of the sea dogs − they are upset enough by him already. The saltwater gets really chilly really quickly, but his demon blood burns hot enough that he's only partially hypothermic by the time he spots a steep rocky wall he could use to get to firm ground. “You could just fly,” says his last remaining brain cell, lonely and rattling against his skull. It sounds remarkably like his big brother, so he tells it to go fuck itself. Climbing'll do him good by warming his extremities, no matter that he scrapes away what must be half his skin on them against the sharp edges of the stone. He keeps at it until he reaches the tower of the church, which is located just on the edge of the cliff, solemnly facing the expanse of the oceans. A good view, but no reason to dwell, especially when the design is much more familiar this time around; he quickly maps his way down again, since he realizes the path forward snakes on the ground level, naturally.

Surprisingly, it goes quite smoothly from there. It's still alright as missions go. Vie de Marli − or Dumary island for the less pretentious − really is an island, as promised. It's … island-y. He's also making some money with the orbs he's been gathering for the lack of anything better to do; there are barely any hostiles at all when he travels the abandoned alleyways, noting how everything around here seems to be colored by an ugly shade of mud and rust. It's good to note that he doesn't feel an irresistible need to befriend the demonic skeletons he runs into now and then, so it's both sides he's rejecting now more or less equally, not just humans. More importantly, the place is completely foreign from the architecture of every other construction than the church to the fauna haunting it. Even Sparda himself hasn't shed any altars or colossal idols during his journey here; if he didn't know better, he wouldn't know he'd ever been here (come to think of it, that applies to most things about their father). When he makes camp for the night, he doesn't truly believe he will be awoken by any straggling Angelos. He won't sleep a lot nevertheless since his dreams are fair game to any and all disturbances, but he takes what solace he can get.

It's fine, his subconscious does takes care of providing him with unspeakable horrors today too; no need for other abominations. Belly warm with mellow, lovingly rectified ethyl alcohol of agricultural origin, Dante nods off momentarily, guard down just long enough for sleep to sink its long claws into him. He opens his eyes and he's there, climbing through the familiar mirror in front of him, movements jerky and ungraceful. Dante connects the dots while he slowly twitches and lurches forward, inch by inch; it's like the marionettes, even though he can't see the strings on his limbs. The visage he's wearing this time is that of their youth − it's so beautiful he feels the sight etch itself in his retinas, glowing even with his cold eyes totally blank. No spark of recognition in them at all; they might as well be red. It's beyond creepy when they are combined with his slender teenage body, which is still as haunting as it was ten years ago.

He kisses Dante, lips burning his mouth with a tenderly cruel frostbite, and yet he can't pull away, doesn't even want to. His brother opens his mouth, suddenly sensual, and sighs into him, oh so slow and sweet. Dante can feel the breath flow into his lungs, cold air that curls there and makes his pulse a frenzied staccato rhythm. And then the figure starts to bleed; it throws up blood into his mouth, the black, uninterrupted stream of it growing from a breeze-thin rivulet into a violent stream when it holds on, lips still locked on his, the blood thick and barely even lukewarm and tasting of only brass. Dante doesn't, won't, move or breathe − he stands there, their position hardly even an embrace, and just takes it, the blood quickly filling his stomach and intestines and his gullet, making them heavy, heavy, heavy. It rises from his esophagus to his nasal cavity and starts to stream out of his nostrils and ears and tear ducts, and he gurgles and swallows and it keeps coming, the both of them bleeding onto, into, each other now. It feels like it's trickling inside his skull somehow, pressure building against his brains making everything turn to black, until he can only sense the blood flood inside his head, until he drowns and wakes.

He dry heaves and hacks and hacks his lungs but nothing comes out, not even spit. When he's done trying, slumped on the damp ground, his lips have cracked and they burn. They heal faster than his breath settles.

\--

Another day, another fight. Dante hears the herd of goats coming, but getting up from where he's lying in the scrubby grass doesn't sound that appealing. He hasn't been sleeping, but his arm has stiffened in the position he's thrown it across his face and he feels stiff and aching on the whole. Early morning's dew has set on his body and he's dank and vexed and miserable. Maybe they'll go away if he ignores them.

No such luck, they don't. They make this oinking sound − or whatever it is that animals like them say, he doesn't know, he was read ancient fables and curses as a child, cut him some slack− and gather closer, barely hovering in air. He manages to crank his arm up with a creaky click of the old joints; the goats practically vibrate with excitement. He's also able to gather his bones lumberingly before one of them can singe his mantle; it's a close call, though, the lawn blackens and gives off smoke. This is not shaping out to be a good day.

The pack is grouped tightly together; with a sword he could cleave all of them into two with a well-aimed strike in the middle, yet here he is, gunning them down two at a time like an amateur while trying to flex awake his limbs that are still partially asleep. He doesn't know why he's even bothered to haul Rebellion along now, when he hasn't been able to stand touching it for some time. Just as he thought would happen when he realized he had travelled so light that he had no other blades with him at all but it was too late to turn back and expect to get any money out of this − it's proving out to be just dead weight to him in his current state. It doesn't take long for him to stick exclusively to his guns today; Ebony and Ivory have seen some shit too, but it somehow feels less raw this way. So basically he just shoots his way through the thin herds of lesser demons, all brute force and automatic reflexes. He'd love to have a more hands-on weapon − the girls kind of get old after a while, and maybe it looks more like a challenge if he's up close. Using Beowulf is out of the question, though, not to mention he's pawned a lot of his devil arms that haven't met their end in his bouts of blue devils and delirium tremens for drinking money. They are rare these days, the episodes, he's happy to note; the hot new craze is apathy now, and he's really getting into it.

Dante's considering the merits of greeting Lucia with either silence or an unnecessary witty remark which could maybe make him more palatable to human tastes when he spots her wandering towards a small house that, for all intents and purposes, looks identical to the dozens of buildings around it − since he hasn't come across any number plates or street names, how do they keep track of who lives where? He saw a sign that looked a lot like a buss timetable in the more, for the lack of a better word, urban part of this town, but he's got the feeling it's something else (horse carriage rides?). Lucia could tell, except he isn't really interested in knowing the answers, and then the house is gone in an explosion of pink-black smoke, taking its neighbors with it. His client chooses the wrong moment to still in shock so he pulls her aside until the detonation burns out; it leaves no debris behind, just the subtle whiff of rotten eggs and carbon monoxide he doesn't smell but can still instinctively detect. Definitely demonic powers at work here. Will they be paying him extra, now that he seems to be acting as her bodyguard too? When the dust has almost settled, she tears herself free and staggers unsteadily to the epicenter of the blast, calling after someone, panic as potent and visible as the water building in her eyes. Dante contemplates if he should ask her if she's okay, but it's not his business, he doesn't care and she isn't, clearly. Her voice reaches a relieved note when something moves in the periphery of his vision; it's an old woman crawling from somewhere underground like a sleepy rodent, looking inappropriately cheerful. He's happy for them, really.

So, time to find out what this is all about. Apparently, a businessman with a hard-on for “the demon powers”, the woman tells him − she's a whatshername to him with that accent. The only remarkable thing about it seems to be how remarkably ordinary it all is; if he received a fiver every time he was informed of someone planning world domination, he'd be a lot drunker now. Maybe he'd even be able to drink himself a liver failure, with that kind of hard cash. Exciting.

He doesn't really want to take the job but he doesn't want to reject it. Doesn't want anything to do with it but doesn't mind it either. There hasn't been any talk about his payment yet, but if they are this desperate to have him play their savior, they've got to have something. Well then.

Dante searches his pocket until he finds one of the coins he tends to keep on his person these days. They are virtually indistinguishable from each other, trinkets with no sentimental value attached to them at all. At this point his disinterest in everything hinders his decision-making process so much that he's outsourced it to a coin. It probably has a larger capacity for things like emotions and good judgement and has a more affable personality to it too. It's great: he hasn't mostly had any say in the course his life has taken, things just happen to him, so why not trust the responsibility to an inanimate piece of metal (most likely it's more shitty plastic or whatever than actual minerals, but that's beside the point)? It's a crutch, sure, but if it works too well something's sure to take it away eventually. The skeletons he's encountered, the ones with the gibbeting, remind him of himself and it's somehow almost funny to him − just as the iron cages hold their bones together, he manages to be somewhat functional with the token dictating his choices. Maybe Lucia wanted an emotional support coin of her own and that's why they raided the museum. He's done worse for less.

He flips it. It lands on his palm with the distorted silhouette of a woman with even more distorted guns on top. The old woman is delighted; she spins her staff about while she rattles on and on about ancient history. Dante has the vaguest notion he should be able to recognize the god depicted at the tip of it. He looks at the intertwining snakes and still tastes the brine of the sea in his mouth.

His feathers get ruffled again when she takes up Sparda and his battles here; it's like she expects him to be ecstatic about the topic, about collecting some new crumbs of knowledge to some imaginary diorama of the history of a happy family. She can keep them: he's not a fucking pigeon, his eating habits are definitely worse. If she's attempting to make this gig appealing, she's doing a poor job of it. The fuck does he care about what Father was up to, back when he was still alive? Sparda is gone, his poor wife too, his elder son. His only legacy is that his sons − son, now, son of Sparda − have been as determined as he was to absolutely decimate their loved ones.

This is a dying lineage.

All that said, he still accepts. The coin said so.

He doesn't like confronting any demons that are his own, but it's hard to swallow the feeling his brother's may have been right about him. He's not running a charity and saving these people from power-seeking CEOs and evil public corporations (and what was this fucker's name again? Something stupid, like Alexis. Antonius. Aristoteles. He'd be rolling in his grave if he were ever given even the smallest shred of dignity to be buried, if Dante could have put him to the ground and mourned him properly.) out of the pureness of his heart. Rather the opposite, in fact; if he had a humane cell in him, he would've agreed instantly because it was the right thing to do and not made a song and dance of it, conceding out of reasons only related to his own peace of mind. He doesn't have any leftover sympathy to burn for the plights of others when pitying himself eats all his time up − did he ever? It's great he isn't gifted in anything other than kicking ass and imagining reciprocal sexual tension between poles that repel each other, so it isn't likely he's going to repeat his sibling's deeds and raise demonic towers to Hell to resurrect him with human blood or whatever these things use as their power source.

Then the old woman promises him a story about Sparda if he's successful in dealing with their pest problem. He considers explaining to her that, among prizes, it's somewhere around spitting in his face and claiming he has these vivid incestuous hopes and dreams because his father left him and his daddy complex focuses on the next best thing − which is still miles above winning a round against the only true match he's ever had and earning the trophy of watching him die, sometimes by his own hand−, but he's already been acting like a snotty teenager long enough; time to act like a snotty adult. So he grunts something at them and plods into the same hole the old lady appeared from, the one that allegedly leads to a harbor. What he's supposed to do there he hasn't the faintest idea of, but as long as it's not related to him by blood, it won't kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage of Melville Dante tries to translate unsuccessfully is the following: “For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity.” It somehow reminds me of Vergil. The poem mentioned is Catullus again (101), one of my main inspo pieces for this story. Here, a quick and dirty translation:
> 
> Having travelled through many peoples and many seas  
I arrive to these miserable funeral rites of death, my brother,  
to give you a last gift  
and to address the silent ashes in vain  
seeing that fortune has taken you from me by force.  
Oh, my undeserving, denied brother, (stolen from me)  
now, in the meantime, the gifts, which in old custom of our ancestors  
are offered in this sorrowful duty of mine,  
accept, the gifts drenched with a brother's tears  
and forever, my brother, hail and farewell.


	4. iv. And Meanwhile You Come in Flames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: welcome to Hell.
> 
> Things kinda got out of hand, but at least we have something resembling a plot in this story, now. I intended to separate this into two, but it kind of felt like a dick move. Also, I've maybe taken some liberties with the chronology of the game missions here.

_“-- facilis descensus Averno:_

_ noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;_

_ sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,_

_hoc opus, hic labor est.”_

“Fine, but what does it mean?”

He casts him a look that's supposed to reproaching but comes across fond if you know his face well enough. Dante does. It's easier to know a face you see almost every time you look up or down or to the side than go through the trouble of climbing up to a mirror when you want to see it − one day he'll be tall enough to use Mother's mirror, the one that's shaped like their amulet and hangs on the dressing room wall, without a stool under his feet, first by standing on his toes and then just walking up to it. And he likes to look at him so does it a lot, and so he knows his expressions, too. It's sometimes difficult because he's good at hiding things. Now it's not a problem; he even breaks into a little smile when Dante moves his hand from his side to pet his hair and then starts to comb his fingers through it, cozy like a kitten in sunlight. Pretty, both the smile and the hair. He in general. Dante always teases him because he brushes it every morning and evening with a silver brush and looks so serious and concentrated doing it. It takes so long too; by the time he's finished, Dante's played a round of cards against himself and drawn a picture of an ass with his brother's name scribbled across its belly and broken his pen all over his hands so they're all inky now in his boredom. Waiting sucks and waiting for him is definitely the worst, but this is nice, his hair is nice. There are no tangles so Dante doesn't really need to run his fingers in it and it's smoother than his that's kinda frizzy, maybe because he also uses conditioner like a girl. It feels like the dress in Mother's closet that she never uses between his fingers, the one with light pink flowers. He thinks it's called silk but he isn't sure. Satin. Velvet.

His brother shifts his head, propped on his lap and Dante's hands still fondling his hair, to take a better look at the book he's holding like it's a fluffy animal, real careful and dainty. “`To descent to Hell is easy´,” he begins after silently thinking about it for a while. Dante interrupts him because that's what he does. “But it wasn't that easy when you told me how they do it. Anis --”

“Aeneas.”

“Whatever. He has to find the witchy woman first so she can tell him what to do, and then the golden stick too. That's a lot of work.” His twin huffs, more amused than annoyed. That's actually pretty common, but you wouldn't know, judging by how much he sulks.

“It's easy _in comparison_.”

“To what?”

“I'll tell you if you let me speak. Hush now. `To descent to Hell is easy − day and night, the dark doors stand open --´”

“But aren't they, like, gates?” Another look, but he still doesn't move away or tell Dante to stop manhandling him, so it's okay.

“It's the same word. `The doors are open; but to retrace the steps and survive the flight to the breeze − this mission, it's an endeavor. ´”

“And what 's that mean?” Dante sticks his tongue out at him to emphasize and he pushes it back with his finger. When his mouth is closed, he keeps his finger on his lips, presses them gently, suddenly thoughtful.

“That no matter how hard it is to get there, coming back is even harder.”

Words to live and die by, he thinks later.

\--

After the hoofed and gibbeted enemies from his first day of this island hop − he's been lied to by all the nonexistent travel brochures and gift shops around; Dumary island is actually_ two_ islands connected by a bridge and not a single one like one could assume on the basis of the name and he's really feeling cheated here −, Dante's up to his ass in charred monkeys and monkeys spitting venom and monkeys on fire and giant feathered monkeys with giant fists now. To complete the bad King Kong vibes, the next he knows he's scaling skyscrapers and waiting to be shot at the top by a squadron of hostiles. They never come. There's a single chopper and it tries its best, to no avail. He shoots it down and swallows up his disappointment; turns out there's not a fair beauty for him to kidnap either, it was the beast that killed him, and now he's just torturing the poor metaphor to death, sorry about that. But it's really true, he thinks he is as out of his element as a savage ape in the middle of Manhattan, dragged here in chains or not. He'd at least like to have a go at a dinosaur, please: it might provide a challenge, for a change.

(_Considering jumping is just stupid, though, because falling from this height is only going to make him crankier, so he doesn't consider it when he lingers on the edge of the roof, fields of asphalt and wrecked vehicles spreading far beneath him. Like most things, it mostly feels like nothing − what really does bother him is the sky which just _has_ to blaze again, purple electricity flickering in and out of sight, like the Angelo playing with a light switch. Anyway, the local Empire State Building is far less impressive after standing at the apex of a spire constructed by the literal blood, sweat and tears of deranged demon worshippers that truly did reach the clouds and beyond, somehow. He does jump, in the end, but there's a marked difference between doing it like this, head first and with an accentuated purpose, and crossing the edge with closed eyes and a mind that needs to be silenced by any means necessary. It's good that he can't die that way, so he doesn't have to think about it, how it would feel and then wouldn't_.)

It gets difficult to keep track on the days again; not because he's drunk as a grape around the clock like he'd prefer to be − hauling enough alcohol for that with his unnaturally high tolerance wouldn't have been feasible even with his likewise considerable abilities of a beast of a burden, sadly − but because it feels like he's fighting the same fight over and over and over again. It's always a problem to some degree: unforgettable battles are few and far between, and even times like raiding Temen-ni-gru have a lot of menial grunt work to them. Decapitate a Pride, hack an Envy into two, beat the shit out of a Greed or five with their own coffins only to face another wave of the fucking stone-blood bats coming and screaming and multiplying and hear the high-pitched wail of Enigmas around the corner. Not every hostile can be a shadow doppelganger of yourself, after all. But if he thinks of Mallet is-- − no, abort mission, bad idea, let's still not do that − of the tower ordeal, at the very least most of the bad guys understood him when he yelled expletives at them.

Vie de Marli is worse, in that sense. None of the goons he faces react at all when he taunts them; they only continue preparing the attack they've been at the last half an hour and Dante's surely dying of old age, here. “Fuck you,” he still tries. He even sways his hips invitingly. This evokes no response from the fire wraiths around him. So much for his sex appeal. He coaxes and persuades and threatens them to react, but his pains are only met with lethargic swaying of bony hands. How nice that some of the skellies know how to use magic, but their necromancy is really weak even in his eyes of a layman and it takes them forever and ever to cast. Fuck's sake, he's not a fancy magician like his late brother, but even he could learn how to draw circles and glyphs as simple as these this while waiting for them to finally lay siege on him. Come on, come on, _come on_, it's not healthy for him to be this still.

It's not surprising that bags of bones rigged up by iron exoskeletons and voodoo lunge and cleave their way to their death at his hand in a frustratingly predictable way, but he's gotten used to being spoiled with the occasional invigorating boss fight. Unfortunately, the same can be said about all the bigger demons. They don't appear to have the capacity for any higher functions, so _can_ they obey someone's orders? If not, then why are they here; is what the old woman said true, that this place has become a paradise for evil spirits and they just drift here, pulled like moths to a flame? It's difficult to say if the flaming discount Minotaur, for instance, is really summoned by the CEO guy he still can't remember the name of or if it just appears at an opportune time and is mindlessly ready to fight anything and everything. Dante sympathizes with the latter, he really does.

This sort of passiveness is to be expected with the golems, yet in these god-forsaken parts even the non-golem ones are like golems and it's getting to him. He's not sure why; he's found his people, clearly, since he's mostly a brainless piece of clay too, lady Fortuna acting as his master and judge. It could be that they unnerve him so much because he sees his own present and future in them, he thinks while he's standing in a small stream cleaning gore and bits of brains and miscellaneous flesh from his new jacket, his old ones being in relatively good shape but difficult to wear. He drinks this thought away as soon as he can extract the flask from his breast pocket. Dante's never been one for self-reflection and he's sure as Hell not going to start now, shivering in cold water and unsure if he still smells like death or if it's just his mind playing tricks on him again. Too late anyhow, there's no one to know himself for.

” _Γνῶθι_ _σεαυτόν_,” the poets would say in his brother's voice, “_know thyself_.” What a load of crap. If he could, he would estrange from himself immediately, no packing his bags and no goodbyes. He's done more introspection than should be humanly possible during the past ten years, and where has it led him exactly, how is he better or better off with that knowledge?

It's funny, in the way things tend to be funny these days, the “knock the air out of your lungs and make you wish you could unplug your brains by shooting yourself in the head and have it stick” kind, that it's what fighting's like these days. Mindless. He can be as neglectful of his surroundings as his outbursts require him to be and he's none the worse for wear, because the enemy's attacks can be seen coming two years before his opponent has even lifted their weapon, since everything around him moves as slowly as time in general now, hours rather crawling on and on drunk and on all fours and sometimes on their stomachs too rather than running like they're supposed to, according to anything written ever. The less he crawls himself, the more slowly does the body of days move forward; properly plastered, it's possible to spend a weekend in one night, the times throwing up, smashing bottles against the walls and staring dumbly at Rebellion − waiting for the blood to come, finally, so he could maybe make peace with killing him, because it feels better in some nebulous way, minutely, that there was still something left of _him_ to kill − bleeding into each other, masking the junctures between them like rain almost hid his thin tears in the rain falling over the remains of the tower.

Dante's his own worst enemy here. It's nothing new, but it doesn't need to be underlined this brightly.

It's more likely that his body will collapse due to the lack of sleep he's making it go through − travel and combat both eat up a great deal energy and he's, on the whole, been running on fumes for some time since he isn't eating either, but no sleep means no sleep paralysis and no nightmares − than any enemy managing to get the jump on him. Take, for example, the skyscraper-possessing (_a different building than the one he met the demon-infested chopper on. There are lots of them, for a rural town in the middle of nowhere. There must be some valuable natural resources here or something to make it worth it for the business types to piss mark the area so thoroughly. The answer comes in the form of numerous oil-drilling platforms scattered everywhere, later_. _Black gold is gold is gold, apparently._) foe that kind of seems cool at first sight. It roars and trashes and Dante's almost excited in a masochistic way; how is it going to try to rile him up, could he even get a creative insult? He'll settle for mediocre. But when it opens its jaw, all that comes out is blindingly white pulses and blasts of light which he is only having trouble with avoiding because he was standing right there on the line of fire, waiting for it to tell him off. After the initial wave of attacks, defeating it is just a matter of counting the blitzes and hitting it during the intermissions, even when it shreds the body that's only good for slowing it down and wobbles around him as a disembodied noggin. What use does a cranium have if there's nothing going on upstairs; for all the good it did their fight, the creature could've simply been beaming out of its stomach or ass.

Basically nothing is good, everything is buggered either way; when the hostiles talked back, it would unnerve him by reminding him of some of the more memorable cronies he interacted with in his quest to crash Mundus' party, and now that they are silent, he gets Vietnam War flashbacks to the Angelo. Dante just can't win, can he, or catch a simple break.

It's good that they don't seem to possess a sliver of intellect at all in some cases, though. Nothing surprises him anymore, that is. When the giant flaming spider thing he has already fought on Mal-- _that he already has beaten repeatedly in the past_ unceremoniously drops from the sky, he accepts it as a thing that happens to him. Why wouldn't it, of all things, return to him? He goes to work and kills it dead again, mind carefully blank as always. Just another Tuesday. When everything is fucked, nothing really registers. (_When it's dead, nowhere near as powerful as it was back in the good old days, his hands shake so violently his body decides to join the fun too_. _He only vomits a little, looking at the lava bleed out of the carcass when it's disintegrating before his eyes. He knows he's crossed a line when seeing dead demons is more upsetting than coming across dead humans as well as he knows the fact that he doesn't want to think about what he'd do if he came back like this, an animated corpse, again._ _He wants to be above it all. He isn't. It's his original sin, the hubris. He's deluded himself into believing he really does love him, that it's enough, that it matters. Yet how could he have the audacity to shout that from the rooftops when he couldn't even recognize him, when he didn't even try and understand him at all? All his love, such as it is, amounts to nothing. _

_Maybe it's nature's way of proving him wrong; he believed it was as bad as it could possibly get after the portal affair. He isn't getting better, he'll never get better, he takes a drink and hopes this Argosax delivers the fight he's been promised._)

Thanks to this fucked up passiveness thing, Dante can also fight the skelly swordsman and his supersonic strays no less than twice with relatively few rewinds to the purplish blue glow of the broadsword the dark angel wielded in his disturbing style − it's not that it wasn't effective or deadly, how could he even claim that when it pinned him to the wall so effortlessly and only retreated because something about the amulet startled it, but it was still universes apart from the otherworldly elegance he came to know as his brother fighting. Vulnerable to attacks from behind when blocking, the stiffness of the way it swung its crude sword in place of the usual fluid, scalpel-precise perfection, telegraphing his − fuck, its, its − intentions of making a deathblow with a fierce swing from the top of its ghastly helmet to the ground clearly enough that Dante could evade the worst of it, only getting caught in the aftershocks. He should've identified him no matter what, but sometimes he's less shocked about the fact that he didn't.

(_And. That begs the question of the whereabouts of his brother's beloved katana, Yamato − and she's Yamato, no articles needed or allowed. His twin was always strangely insistent on this until Dante had to yield and bend in the face of his steely will, in this case literally metallic and often enough pressing delicately against a jugular, and eventually he expanded this courtesy to Rebellion and some other choice arms. Yet Rebellion is definitely not a she, it's silent and sexless and inert. It's a loyal companion, sure, but it's also seen him at his worst, helped him do his worst, and he hates it the same way he does himself, just not as profoundly. Dante can't be afraid of what the two of them are capable of doing when the unthinkable has already been committed, but that doesn't mean the possibility of him turning it against his Mother's kin some day when he's been numb long enough to give up the pretenses doesn't occur to him from time to time. He can't pretend it worries him as much as it should._

_Yamato, though, he always suspected she sang to her partner, somehow − the first woman he was ever jealous of. Or envious. He's no wordsmith and thus still not quite sure if the former implies that he's ever had some kind of claim to him. He wants to slip, use the the, just to see if he drags himself to the land of the formally living to berate him, but Yamato's not here to address. It's not really like he actually knows what would happen if he could see her, but whatever it'd be, it wouldn't be pleasant. Maybe it's better this way, that they are both dead to the world._

_It killed him to realize that she wasn't there when he died_.)

Dante's aim is off, too: not in such a way that he can't hit what he intends to − his hands don't tremble when he _fights_, and that's all he's willing to say on the topic today −, but he can't concentrate enough to prioritize the bosses over the underlings, so he ends up shooting flamebats and bones with swords when there's an iron giant the other side of the room firing hefty steel balls at him. To put it simply, he wastes time. If they wanted to have this done efficiently, maybe they should've considered sending someone else to do their bidding, not someone who is failing at keeping himself together to the extent that staying awake in combat is starting to be a greater challenge than dodging. He's out of focus, out of time; a living fossil.

There's a lot of time to think stupid, idle thoughts. Like when he keeps hacking off the legs, tentacles, whatever these wiggling appendages should be called off the reptile she-demon with a rather prominent rack, not that he really notices because he's a poor imitation of a red-blooded male, again and again; isn't madness doing the same things over and expecting the results to be different? He's half waiting her to gush with deceitful glamour and go all siren on him, but she won't, doesn't even let him hear a dying scream. She just wilts and leaves him in an empty room, water up to his knees.

Back in the day, Nevan's relentless flirting may have irked him more than he let on, but at least shattering her frozen body to pieces with the nunchaku almost seemed like the smallest of accomplishments; another foe dead, another step closer to his brother, to making him see reason. And he got a classy new weapon for his troubles, too, whereas these demons are so soulless that there's nothing left of them when Ebony and Ivory have done their thing, no last wills to be sealed in devil arms. What a rip-off, this mission.

Dante sloshes towards what appears to be a storeroom and thinks how much fun adventuring with wet shoes is going to be. He doesn't spend much time at all in his devil form during the scrapes, but he figures the place he needs to be is on the far end of the map, because where else would it be? Walking takes it sweet time and burns daylight and moonlight, so he triggers often, sprints and dashes and refuses to admit he might be simultaneously attempting to run away from his troubles like the pathetic sod he is. Kingdom for a horse; even a Geryon would do, if not for travelling then just for letting some steam out through a decent clash.

It just stands there out in the open in the warehouse, inexplicable, next to a shotgun that's so mediocre he comes up short when he tries to figure out a name for it; a perfectly operational motor bike, some purple lining the blacks on its sides, looking for all the world as if it just happens to be hanging out here of all places. It looks like a trap, but nothing happens when he mounts it and rides through the hole in the wall he blasts into it just before crashing flat against it. Dante has never looked a gift horse in the mouth since pretty much everything he has ever been given has been obviously terrible from the get-go, so doing it now would be weird.

Later, Dante's pleasantly surprised again to find a rather nice broadsword sticking out of some guy lying on a charred bed in the shady refinement factory he's trekking through, waiting for it to explode. Difficult to say whether it's a fresh kill or not, what with the corpse being quite thoroughly burned too. He hasn't been impaled himself since the Angelo almost punctured his lungs, and when he looks at the cadaver, he's not sure how to feel about it (_bad, naturally, but exactly how? Vindictive, maybe? Angry? Bereft? Cockbloked?)._ He takes the sword and leaves the dude to be dead in peace. Lucky fucker, there.

It's all so beneath him that he doesn't even bother to change the way he wields it when he changes weapons − the same dance of lunge, hit, jump, strike from above he'd performed earlier during his briefer than brief stint with Rebellion carrying him through most of these encounters, the routine dragging his inattentive body forward. It's really affecting his general stylishness he has at some point in his life taken pride in; it's no use to taunt his enemies and combine his attacks into innovative chains when they don't even notice they've been hit until they are already missing half their body. He doesn't feel up to the boisterous charade he used to put out, so he just slashes and fires inelegantly until he has made a hole in the wall, this time with an airplane, and gets to fresh air again. He used to try to cultivate this image of himself as an outgoing party animal. This, of course, was in his teens, the time when he made a lot of mistakes in other ways too and even ruined the one fluke he's ever had permanently, but it was still stupid. In actuality he'd spend the time he wasn't out on the streets asking for a fight locked up in his office, drinking and stuffing his face with cheap greasy food when he wasn't falling in and out of sleep light enough that any twitch of his body would wake him instantly to a full, anxious alertness. To be fair, he did go to clubs and bars back then, though he visited the first only to find predatory demons to fight and the latter he mostly abandoned after the fiasco of his attempted promiscuity. To some extent, it's all actually truer now; while going out is something he reserves only for work or trips to the liquor store and his capabilities for social interaction are what they are, he's constantly throwing a hell of a pity party for himself.

The bike is loyally waiting for his return outside; he has so much time to spare that he doesn't even get to see the explosion. Must have been spectacular, with all that oil and kerosene. Crossing the bridge sound like something that should end with a surprise sea monster plummeting him to the water, but nothing happens, there are not even streetlamps to welcome him.

In the end, he hates it on this side even more. He has to use his brain too much trying to find an entrance to the ancient temple and making progress in seizing it: he hits the blue globes again and jumps to platforms which disappear under his feet and takes his frustration out on a lot of undoubtedly culturohistorically irreplaceably valuable pottery. It hurts, the brainstorming. Sure, it's a change in scenery to be underground, but the brawling is mostly a rerun of The Planet of the Apes again. Biology is not his strong suit, but there seem to be no forests around here, so where do they even come from?

Eventually, finally down in the inner chambers, Dante finds Lucia inspecting an azure cup. Or a goblet, or something to that effect. There's a weird, contrived edge to her voice; while she raves on about them being able to stop Arius' (_see, he knew the name was something weak like that!)_ ambitions now with the gadgets, he diagnoses from his armchair that it's most likely her losing it. Whatever. It's one thing to know, in the abstract sense, that there are other disturbed people at large and another to witness it firsthand, but he still isn't sure if it's comforting or not. She, too, is clearly unstable; she starts to make a performance out of not being deserving of what she calls “this power”, all the while preserving the distant, affected note to her manner of speaking. Dante has given up following; what power? The old things?

At the end of the day, her acting so strange still doesn't concern him personally so he lets her go when she says she has something to do and dumps the cup to him. She has the air of someone who's going to do something stupid soon, but it's not like he's ever in a position to be the judge of that. Back outside to the yard that hides the entrance of the temple behind one of those glowing blue orbs again, the old woman is already waiting for him. There's, naturally, just one more thing she needs to ask from him; Lucia, like one could've predicted, went off to take on Arius alone, and since woman seems to share his opinion on her current ability to make sound decisions, she's worried and wants Dante to save her with the staff and coin, somehow. He doesn't really need to see which way his consigliere lands, because this is exactly the kind of thing he would end up doing.

And sure enough, he finds his way to the main island again and catches Arius in the middle of a bout of evil laughter, which, admittedly, he does have down. What a cliché. The first time they met, he showed up like one would imagine a rich douchebag like him to make an entrance, flashy and loud, his chopper not infested. Dante's not digging this pale skin with red eyes look he's got going on for the obvious reasons, but he also looks like a bad guy from the get-go, it's so stupid. Come on; if the appearance is not enough to tip people off about his plans of taking over the human world or whatever, he's wearing that spiffy lined mink cape and has named his enterprise after a snake that eats itself; how blatantly evil can you get? He wonders how guys like this wake up, go about their morning and decide which realm they'd like to conquer today. He doesn't want to ask how they live with themselves, though, since the answer is most likely better than he does.

(_He means, did he always think like that, have those plans? Or was it something that he just came up with one day, a bolt out of the blue, just like that taking over both realms and likely committing genocide while at it was something he just decided to attempt? The harder question is, naturally, what he intended to do, once he got the power he coveted. Get rid of Mundus and be crowned the king of the netherworld, no doubt, but for what purpose? Revenge − and that, for their family or only whatever Mundus had done to him,_ if_ it actually happened against his own will? Having the demon equivalent of a sports car or some other penis extension? Just for the hell of it?_

_The hardest question, of course, being; had he ever cared about him at all or could he have, given time? Would he have forgiven Dante, eventually? For letting him fall, for killing him, for being disgusting and knowing it and still being utterly powerless to stop himself from getting his rocks off to the image of them kissing, to the way his mouth would look when he'd be_ _inside of Dante?)_

“That's just a piece of crap,” Dante says, eloquent as ever, and it's true, this plan sucks. How does the Chairman-whatever think his body can handle Sparda's power when it turned even the Jester guy into a blob even though he apparently knew arcane stuff and had some kind of unnerving, moving scar on his creepy face to prove it? To be honest, it's not only his fanciful schemes that don't interest him; neither does the death of this man, not really, but it'd be kind of cruel to say that out loud, maybe. He lets his guns and the Vendetta speak for him.

While beating him is too easy, it's kind of refreshing that he has an opponent that technically could answer his jibes − not that he really does, because it's over in a second. That's probably why he doesn't kill him even when he could, so casually, before he even managed to move a finger at Lucia, apparently still hanging on the wall like a bad imitation of Christ. Whatever, he's toying with him now, prolongs the inevitable, because Arius is the only thing to address him here apart from the three-faced demon that exclaimed “The son of Sparda, you must repent your sins” in a manner which made him believe it was merely programmed to say that. When Arius moves like he has a plan, he lets him blow up the building and picks his client up and it's time to jump out of a building once again. Safely down, Lucia confesses that Arius created her, and Dante wonders why she's telling him this; he'd like to her to tell him what is it about him that makes her want to confide to him, so he could try and remove it from his being, save them both time. He doesn't know how to comfort her, supposes he doesn't want to.

“Every hero has a weakness,” he states for the lack of anything else to say. Luckily, he's not a hero himself, so he's allowed to have as many as deemed necessary.

Dante's not sure how far his contract of employment extends. Lucia seems convinced he's on board to prevent Arius from reaching his goals, so he goes with the flow for now. Ah, the plan to “transcend all living things”; kill them? turn them into artificials? Dante doesn't quite see the big picture here because the plan is really bad and Arius is bad at this villain ranting and revealing all his plans thingamajig. The moon is getting eclipsed by its shadow, though, and this somehow triggers the ritual to summon Argosax or something. It's like that ticking clock on bombs in shitty movies, signaling that they have exactly the time they need to have on their hands to do the thing. So, he has to enter the next building in one way or another, and the way turns out to be wandering back to square one, killing some enemies − everything is the same as before, though it's dark on the alleys now and the goats are bigger − and playing with those blue balls once again, no euphemisms for anything intended. It's obvious that the entrance to Arius' lair is a giant teethed mouth of some demonic thing, so after he's destroyed its middle eye, down he jumps. He doesn't know how he knows these things.

Wandering through the halls − they all look the same, as do the rooms, and with this kind of opulence he'd expect some kind of quality and variety in interior decoration choices −, he breaks every turquoise Ming vase he sees (_How many of those does he have? They all look alike as well_.) and counts the probabilities of the guy getting stronger during the time it took him to get here. They're looking grim.

Arius falls for good this time, still awful at dodging − while his secretaries are nimble and whatnot, it's no trouble at all to dispose of them and then of him and come up with a snappy Bond oneliner. Calling him a false god seems almost like a compliment. It implies the kind of competence he didn't have. Shit, why does everything have to be this hard?

When it's supposed to be pay time, at long last, he's sort of looking forward to getting back to _Devil May_ _Cry _and finally getting soundly wasted. As if sensing this optimism, Lucia asks him to kill her because she's still upset and tells him the story about being created by Arius like she didn't inform him of the exact same thing to him the last time they met; truly, she's having a meltdown. She must be aware of Dante being a demon, right? It's all making him uneasy; how Lady and Trish can stand him, he cannot begin to understand. It's nice that he's lost the ability to feel ashamed for things, that much he can tell. While she's at it, the ritual gets completed in a show of purple lightning and thunder and there's a portal now, a black hole sucking his chances of making it back to his bottles in the immediate future in. She makes a show of sacrificing herself for the common good of the island, claiming coming back might not be possible, so he makes himself look her in the eye and sees her tears.

“Devils never cry,” he echoes the words that immediately come to mind, almost tasting rain and salt. She's artificial, she's neither a human nor a real demon. He doesn't say this, though.

To escape any additional heartwarming talks about his old man, he enters the doorway by foot, wondering if it'll work with no golden branches, if the Sacrifices he's picked up count for something. He lets her have the coin − it's not like he hasn't plenty of those stashed in his office, and this sates her conscience. Lucia can later tell herself he surely intended to come back to retrieve it, that she didn't allow a self-destructive man to go down the road from which there is allegedly no returning. That she hasn't been an accessory to suicide.

He won't be needing the bike where he's going.

\--

Damn if Argosax isn't a complete letdown. First of all; it's a lazy demon, this one, borrowing its shape from others. Even Dante, a half-breed, thinks he's somewhat insulted. It's also an ugly, unholy abomination that smells a lot worse than demons usually do with all that sulphur and rotting flesh he's come to know as the popular eau de cologne choice of Hell, body the color of raw meat and red lava, but it doesn't manage to do a whole lot besides flailing around uselessly. He almost feels bad (_he really does, he gets rid of the bird and the spider first because he desperately needs to abort the thoughts they rouse to their buds_). It dies a bit when all the stolen components are dealt with, but the rumble of the earth − no, rather the ground, they're not in Kansas anymore − promises a prompt rematch.

Alright, so it does have another form. Still boring. His frustration boils up − _this is the only thing he has and it's shit when nothing poses a challenge._ “You cannot kill me,” Dante wants to howl at it, tear it to shreds and blow them up. He feels iron spill in his mouth, suddenly furious when he fires at it, every shot finding its target, dodges, rinse and repeat until it's so weakened that it completely loses its focus and Dante can finish it off with a single shot right next to its unguarded head. It doesn't exactly shatter to pieces since that implies a degree of solidness to its form that it lacks, but to pieces does it go. Then it's gone and he waits but no fanfares or encores are forthcoming, so after a quarter of an hour or so does he suppose it's over.

How the fuck has anyone needed Sparda to get rid of this thing?

He wants to trigger and break everything in sight, but there's nothing to see and nothing for him to channel his sudden excess of rage into. In the end, it sizzles out as quickly as it awoke, leaving him exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with the fighting he has done these past few days and everything to with the fighting he hasn't been doing.

So. How to go on from here?

This, he realizes belatedly, this is not even Hell proper. It's just limbo. Dante doesn't know how he knows this, yet it's as clear as a day; he can't help but feel he's been misled. Epic fight against a resurrected demon king in the inferno, his ass. If this is the most evil thing ever in the history of these people like their legends apparently tell, they, all things considered, have it pretty good.

There's got to be a way down. He could do it, descent, see what all the fuss's about. It's a bad idea, worse than the decisions he usually lets the coin make. He knows it'll only hurt him in the end.

But.

Dante can't help but wonder. This was where he lived, where he spent more time than on the surface with his family. His home, in a sense.

He's lost to him forever, but there's a chance of something of him remaining behind. It cannot kill him but he'll wish it would. And yet; it would still be worth it, because it's him.

Maybe it's the midway in his journey of life and there are only thirty years left to serve for him. Fucking _Divina Commedia. _Or then Mundus is really there and time has healed all his wounds. Ready to retaliate. If what happens is that he takes Dante to the old Yeller, well. There are worse Hells he could imagine.

Pondering this, he notices the motorcycle chilling behind his back. Funny, he thought he left it upstairs. Actually, he distinctly remembers leaving it behind, maybe. Why is the ride here? He walks around it, looks under it, examines the nothingness surrounding him. There isn't anything out of place, and the more he looks at it, the more it's starting to feel like it's just another manifestation of his brand of crazy. Considering that so recent memories can be this deceiving isn't a particularly fruitful trail of thoughts. As much as reminiscence fucks him up, there are no new worthwhile memories to make. Facing Jester or whatever the megalomaniac liked to call himself when he was not monologuing or eyeing his brother lecherously together will be the best thing that'll ever happen to him. For a moment he could believe he'd be able to salvage things, be allowed to make amends, and it was just plainly beautiful how they came and fit together, two circuits closing into one well-oiled piece of machinery, all fluid movements and harmony of their effortless coordination. It he's felt they'd never spoken the same language at all after growing up and growing up grown apart, now they didn't have to read each other's mind because they were dancing across the battlefield in synchrony, and he loved it, loved him so acutely, his presence by his side intoxicating. (_When has he last been drunk on something other than booze_?) But these events came earlier; now Dante is old and fumbling and falling apart. He holds on to the memory all the same even if it burns his fingers to the bone and can't, just _can't _afford it all to be a confabulation, a memory error.

In the end, it's not a conscious decision. He just keeps on driving to an arbitrary direction until it's no use to turn back.

All roads lead to Hell.

\--

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

The difference between limbo and Hell is striking in its sharpness, even though he can't see − or in any other concrete way grasp with his senses − the difference. It's like there's an invisible line on the floor, like when they were kids and declared some corner of the room shared between them their personal kingdom for the afternoon, sometimes just to get a special reason to rough-house a bit. These squabbles were later resolved by Mom assigning them their own rooms after she got tired of waking in the middle of the night to find Dante in his brother's bed, growling crossly when she tried to extricate him from weave of their bodies. Dante was left with the old room; when he sat on the floor after they had redecorated to his liking only, all bright, gaudy colors and garishly patterned fabrics and a cohort of toys and baubles, everything inanimate he called his surrounding him, he had never felt as far removed from home before that. It was never the same, after the first separation; he woke up to the fact it could be taken away from him, just like that, and when he stared at the fire raging outside through the small thin opening between the doors of the cupboard Mother had crammed him into like a bundle of bedsheets, Mother's death rattle rushing in his ears, the heat licking his jaw, he already knew it was over. He didn't need to see large pool of blood on the lawn but he wanted to; all that was left of his brother, larger than life once but now not enough to fill even the smallest of urns. The story of his life: forever and ever being unable to bury the brother that keeps dying on him. Kept dying on him.

(_He never asked how he survived. _

_He doesn't know why he's so fixated on seeing the blood now, when it has lied to him before._

_He thought he could have a home again, when he wasn't dead until he was.)_

The point there somewhere was that he is seeing no gates and guards; is this another thing the stories have been mistaken about? Temen-ni-gru had a Cerberus as its bouncer, and he had half expected to see a bigger and meaner one here − maybe a humongous Cerberus with three regular-sized Cerberuses for its head, every mutt spitting different elemental discharge at any intruders. For fuck's sake, even the island had some demon puppets to greet him. What, does Satan think so little of him that he doesn't even bother sending any troops to hail him? Seriously though; is Mundus doing okay when a, a son of Sparda has breached his domain and is still riding unpunished?

Where's the fire, where's the brimstone and the rivers boiling with blood? It's not a good testament to his character that he wants to see people suffering and being tormented till Doomsday rather than having to deal with an absolute vacuum, but there, it's said and he can't take the thought back.

He's travelled the Leviathan, too, without entering the underworld that way: at least the universe could've had the courtesy to provide him with an actual Hellmouth, this time around. Dante's not sure what is intentions are, but the road to Hell doesn't appear to be paved with anything anyway; he'd like a yellow brick road for this, to make it seem more real. But no, it's all completely the same it was within the dome he fought Argosax in; everything is surrounded in an undulating aurora borealis of dark colours and the ground is cracked dark grey stone going on and on to the infinity.

This can't be all there is in Hell. The old wives' tales of the underworld being pure nothingness stretching on forever are bullshit, there's nothing when you're dead but he isn't, Hell isn't for the dead, he refuses to believe in it and so he drives and drives and drives.

“_Nature abhors a void,” _whispers a poison-soft voice from his memories. It doesn't really ring inside his head or anything tangible like that, it's just a shapeless, disembodied reflection. Please, he thinks, begs the delusions, come back. He could use a guide, a dead lyricist to his Dante.

It must be a symptom of his heritage that he doesn't run out of fuel. Like the bullets, he apparently can fill the engine with pure demonic energy, somehow. It doesn't sound like something he should be able to do − his guns are devil arms and thus special −, but he doesn't question it, not when his indifference turns to curiosity.

Something dawns in the horizon, something thin and tall. He tastes blood, tries to crank the volume up but he's already going as fast as he can and slowly, slowly, the nothingness parts for a passage of withered birch trees, grown neatly in two sharp lines that stretch farther than he can see. He reaches the mouth of the corridor and keeps his course until the regular ranks turn into a forest, first only lone trees breaking the array and then, in stages, birch by birch, the woods around him are thick and heavy with timber and he barely has a path wide enough to follow. At some point, the sky has turned pitch black, the solid, velvety surface of it unbroken by the cracks of stars, yet the light is clear and almost harsh in its brightness and he can see every dark gash on the white bark sharply. Under the wheels spreads now a field of tightly-packed fine sand, the color like ground bone. It goes on like this for what feels like days; the trunks of the trees keep almost hitting his elbows and not once does the trail curve. Dante is wild with something he can't explain − his mind is blessedly silent, only the growl of the bike and the echo of his blood circulating in his veins breaking through the veil of stillness that has enveloped him.

Every blessed thing has to come to an end. He almost loses his balance − he more feels than hears the brakes screech at him − when the forest abruptly forms a clearing. He would've probably missed it in his trance if it wasn't for the crowd of tall, vermin-like demons − their presence is a shock in his system, a forewarning.

It's the aftermath of a battle and it's not pretty. The reason why he reacted so strongly to the demons becomes painfully clear when he gets a good look at them − what's left of them. They are a cross between mantises and ants, from what he can piece together from the pieces of their bodies lying around. It has been vicious, animal: most of them are already dead and don't thus register, but the ones that are still alive, still linger in anguish, are projecting their pain so loudly it feels like it should tear his eardrums, even though he cannot actually hear it.

The sea of blue blood around them is completely dry to the touch. The smell of death is so pervading that it's a little unsettling how he didn't pick it up earlier; there is a lot of decaying going on, some parts have even caught mold. This is the kind of thing that should have an army of flies attached to it, but here there are none. It's actually really silent − all he can hear are the sounds he's making himself, and there's no way he's getting close enough to the carnage to confirm if the critters are breathing audibly.

This is old, now. How are they still alive? He can't come up with any other viable option than that this type of demon has a hearty constitution, which has turned against these individuals, left them to rot when they are not quite dead yet. When he fires at them to put them to sleep, point blank, they die like any other devil, no creepy healing powers.

There was something here, but it was a long time ago.

The road doesn't seem to be taking him anywhere in particular, so he might as well try and find out what's creeping around here; true to his form, he didn't have any concrete or really even abstract plans in mind when getting on the highway to Hell, so he walks his bike forward. He pushes on even when the underworld seems to never run out of birches. Absolutely nothing else grows here, no grass, no fungi, no carnivorous plants. The monotony of the view − black and white husks and stunted, runty branches, pale sand, heavy bleak firmament − is getting creepier and creepier. Whatever spell he was under earlier has broken and his mind is free to roam and bother him again. Being in Hell is all kinds of uncomfortable for him. Mostly it's uncomfortable because of how uncomfortable it isn't, physically. Any signs of exhaustion, for the most part born due to his own actions and failure to take care of his needs and not the combatting, have left him, which means that he has to find something inoffensive to think about.

Dante starts to think back and count his kills on this mission. Then on the previous one.

The terrain changes so slowly it takes him a while to notice it; the ground is getting uneven, just slightly, like there are the beginnings of the smallest of hills building up. And certainly, when he keeps going until he must have travelled for days if not longer, it's flat planes that his surroundings lack.

His ears ring, painfully sensitive, when he hears the first sounds after days of disuse.

There's a herd of the insect-like demons from earlier in another clearing facing a particularly tall hill, though these ones are alive and kicking, almost literally. They are formed like a halo, as regular in their order as the trees lining the pathway, but they're swaying slowly on their hind legs and holding their forelimbs in the air as if they were ready to attack but prolonging it for some reason. Or maybe not − there's something almost ritualistic to it, a caution to their movements, and he takes the trill he detects distantly past the white noise as a warning sound. Dante cranes his neck and lets his gaze search the gaps between their bodies. In the middle of the ring, there is a lump. White-grey fabric, dirtied by soot and sand. And suddenly something's wrong here, gravely so. There's a pressure, like he's all of a sudden dropped to the depths of the Mariana Trench with no warning and no equipment, strong enough to form diamonds. A flurry, like he's underwater, and when he fights to resurface he's hit with the bends; his blood is bubbling, his stomach lurches, his lungs feel simultaneously several sizes too small and ready to burst with the strain of being filled to the brim with unbending air, the pin-pricks of pain radiating to his limbs −

Through the endless miles of dark, oppressing waters above him he wallows his way closer, staggers forward, slowly, almost paralyzed. He sees the demons growl and make their way closer to the origo of the circle, all of a sudden victorious and smelling blood.

The lump growls, rapid and feral and unrestrained, before it lunges at the hellspawn with the kind of desperation that animals only display when they are past their last legs and have absolutely nothing − not their own life or any remnants of healthy, innate fear for pain and suffering − to lose, fully willing to rip their own limbs apart with their teeth themselves if they manage to avoid the killing blow from the foes that way.

The lump, of course, is Vergil.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D
> 
> The opening lines are Vergil (Aeneis / The Aeneid, book six).


	5. v. Red Right Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The program for today: There Will Be Blood.
> 
> I almost felt bad about the cliffhanger back there, so have a quick update :)) (Mostly I just wanted to get the word count to 20 000 so that I could focus on chapter six in peace. Numbers are a serious business.)

Vergil.

It's Vergil. This is Vergil.

This feral thing is Vergil.

Vergil. The thump of his heart is wet, leaden; a heavy squelch in his ears. Vergil.

There was a light, here, earlier, as luminous as an interrogation lamp. Now it's eclipsed by a vigorous stream of dark, murky water going through him, the whirl crashing against him despite the pressure pulling him down, into the mud, into the deep-sea bed, to lay his tired bones to rest. He wants the realization to sink in, but he's only sinking himself, farther to the bottom of the ocean, deeper into this abyss of noises and lack of sensations.

He's sinking to his knees. He's aware of this, distantly.

All his remaining senses scream at him “this is him, alive, it's him”, but they've been wrong wrong wrong before. It's getting to be an ambient sound, washed out by the rush.

His brother keeps going at the demons. He's fast, desperately reckless, manifestly unthinking; he kicks and cripples and dismembers brutally, movements so ferociously violent and quick that it must be pure animal instinct. Vergil rips a head off with an audible bite, simultaneously breaking an appendage that goes for his neck with a hideous crack, barehanded, then takes an eye out by thrusting the loose limb into another demon's socket with brute, disproportionate force. He spits out gore and forces his foot through the softer plating on one creature's stomach, and when he pulls it back, most of its belly breaks open and sprays a cascade of vital fluid on him, on the ground, on the birches around them. Due to his initial shock he missed what happened to the first few unfortunates, but that doesn't really matter when they are already twitching and wiggling in what must be excruciating pain on the ground, screaming soul-piercing shrieks. When Dante catches a glimpse of his teeth, he's not truly surprised to see they are not a demon's fangs, not really. Human teeth, inhuman carnage.

But

this is not how he fights

this is not how he kills

not how he looks at him

With a water-like rippling effect, he turns to face Dante. All the lesser demons are now dead or almost there; he doesn't bother to finish them off, so the concert of dying agony is still there, casually playing in the background. His posture is slouched, as if his always rod-straight, proud spine has been bent out of shape by force. The veil of blanched fabric still covers his body − Dante can now make out the blood, so much blood on him, all of it blue −, but it has slipped and revealed a sliver of his face.

He's different, not older, but it's difficult to focus on that in the face of more immediate issues, to see past the vivid splashes painting his cheeks, dripping from his mouth. There's a consternation of cracks running along his skin, underneath the color. The surface of his face is breaking, like a fine porcelain overlay that has been hit by a small hammer, chipping away at it delicately. Little dainty pieces of china have fallen off, leaving behind a lattice of grooves. The deepest of them show glimpses of something dark crawling underneath.

He's so pallid, like a death mask.

Vergil opens his mouth, dusty-dry but still pink under the gore, the only intact piece of skin on him. Dante can hear no words spilling out − must be the flow, the flood of the high-pitched, deep white noise reverberating in his ears, no, no, it can't go like this now −

Vergil opens his mouth and it's his tongue he spits out. Tastes the air with the tip like a lizard. And there it is, the nausea he's come to expect to be the herald of things getting fucked up beyond repair.

It's, as horrifyingly sickening it is to think of it, becoming more and more apparent that although Vergil's current form is familiar, beloved, he's ultimately still like the Angelo − he's dry as bone, drier, on the outside and all wet, stiff phlegm inside the shell of his figure, judging by the way he hacks and wheezes moistly.

Vergil's eyes are blue, though, light and bright and the color of pale fire. They stand out even in the middle of the cobalt stains. Looking at them, it's impossible to think that they could be any other shade.

But −

(_They were.)_

But they're all wrong too, even when not distorted by Mundus' hand. They are alive, but there's no one home, just this terrifying intensity, this animalistic, aimless drive haunting his features. Dante senses it bodily through all the chaos when they land on him, take him in, but it's a cold feeling, unfamiliar.

Still, Dante wants to reach out to him.

It has cost him, the slaughter. It's painfully clear in how he rasps and gasps, how his body shakes almost violently, his covered legs barely holding him upright. Vergil is panting, shallow little breaths like his lungs can't take in enough air. It's difficult to say if he's opening and closing the vice of his hands on purpose or if it's just the trembling making it look like that.

When he pounces on Dante, hissing and gnarling once his respiration is somewhat under control, he's almost relieved. The thud of his own body hitting the ground is taking place in the distance, like it's happening to someone else.

Vergil hasn't drawn his claws out, so it's just with his regular nails that he digs into Dante's flesh, the pressure at his fingertips so immense that his digits sink deep into his chest, cracking the ribcage open like it's a soft, ripe fruit under his touch, intent and sure. Just his thumbs remain on the surface, almost like a caress, his hands spread out inside his breast, and Dante's gurgling up blood that is warm and hot and real this time.

Dante is pretty sure the wet slide he feels is his finger pressing on the surface of his heart. Maybe he'll eat it. Maybe he'll just drink the blood.

His vision is getting dim, the darkness swimming in him.

Despite having gotten so much practice with expelling matter through his gullet, he's choking in the fluid from his punctured lungs. He wastes his breath, chokes out his name, _his name_, it's so mellow and sharp after all this time. He doesn't need prayers; this is enough, this is his. He drowns in his name, in Vergil.

It tastes tangy, but still sweet, and the saline kiss of the sea is still there on his tongue that feels swollen and too big in his mouth, like it has been cut off and is now just floating to the rhythm of surging blood. It doesn't taste like death at all, even though it is his heart beating his life out of his body through the wounds, through the cavities, through his tears. He isn't sure if this is what dying feels like, or what being happy feels like, or if it's both. Maybe it's merely dopamine rattling in an emptying vessel. It's still good.

Vergil is a solid weight on him, and Dante is sad to note that his own body is rapidly losing warmth, so he can't feel the heat of his body. If he could even detect it, with all the layers separating them. He feels real, like this. Like this, it doesn't matter if he isn't.

He manages to move his hand on top of Vergil's. Not to it swat it away, not to halt his fingers, digging deeper into him, the wet squiggling loud, immediate and yet remote. Just wants to feel it, because it's getting real difficult to feel the touch, his systems going into actual shock now, the panic mode numbing the edge of his body's active discomfort and urgent distress. Dante wants to cry, not because of the pain or the dying, just because this way, he doesn't get to hear his lovely maddening nasal spring-deep voice for the last time.

_Tell me a bedtime story, Verge._

_Sing to me._

He's inside him,

now.

This is how it's supposed to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't do 10K chapters every time :D


	6. vi. The Night Is Already Chasing You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for something completely different: Actual Plot.

His sight has gone out maybe some minutes ago, now, and he's starting to feel pleasantly warm and floating after the coldness of bleeding profusely and being crushed by whatever the fuck everything else of that troubling experience was. It's nice, it's good, it's great, it's nearly painless. Comforting, like falling asleep next to his brother after a long nightmare, back in the days of carefree devotion and free affection. His hibernation needs to be just a bit deeper; he's to some degree conscious of himself still, but it'd be so easy, to give up and give in. There are no memories here in this balmy darkness, no self-imposed obligations to nonexistent graves, nothing to bind him to life. Nothing's easy there − but if the peace and quiet wrap him in them a little tighter, a little more snugly, he can finally let it go.

He wants to let it go.

Just a second longer.

This is, of course, the part where a weird rattle breaks through the nest of mild tranquility. At first, he doesn't and can't pay it any closer attention, but now that it has made a hole in his slumber, the bubble of happy death has burst and the sleep is escaping from him rapidly. The warmth is seeping out of his marrow at an alarming speed, the leak is quickening by the moment, his limbs are getting heavier and sensate and there is a dawn of light on the edges of the blackness. No, _fuck_, let him have this, let him fall asleep believing in having had his face to be the last thing he sees, please --

He opens his eyes and sees Vergil slumped on the sand, convulsing. The source of the racket must've been him, because there is nothing else around them that should be capable of making any ungodly noises − not that Vergil should be capable of making a noise like that.

Dante jerks at the sight, too. His body is up from the ground quicker than his mind can catch up with − apparently, the wounds on his chest have closed some time ago while he was out, leaving behind skin that doesn't even seem to be reddened, _how long has been out of it anyway_, must've been quite the while considering the damage he did to him − and before he knows he's doing it, he's halfway to scrambling to his brother, crossing the distance with drunken stumbling which only works because he's just that desperate to get to him. The twitches Vergil's body makes are grotesque. The spasms and quivers have no rhythm to them at all, they're coming in forceful, disorientated pulses that make him bend and writhe in the sand like he's a small, languishing animal eking out of his meager existence. To top it off, he's gulping like a fish dragged to dry land, his mouth − which stands out now even more than before because of the paleness of his other facial features and the general lack of brighter shades here, a drop of color in a sea of black and white, a rose on broken marble − closing and opening on nothing, making his hopeless breaths sickeningly shallow. Even Dante's own overwhelming panic at this being_ possiblymaybecertainly_ Vergil (_and it has to be him because it's Vergil's thing to die on him_) feels secondary to the mindless agony radiating from his brother, his tormentor, and so he is caught in the eye of the storm raging through him, too.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_, is he supposed to perform some kind of CPR on him? Will he bite out his tongue if he tries and then choke on Dante's blood? He can't die on his arms for the fourth time, he can't deal with this, can't handle even the three times he's been dealt this far; he's once again absolutely powerless to stop him from leaving him behind.

Vergil eventually stills. For a horrifying moment it's like he's gone; he's stopped breathing entirely, and there's an unseeing look in his glazed eyes, a dead stare at nothing in particular. Dante can't breathe either, can't feel his own flesh, the beat of his heart (_which of them, his own or his_?), anything. He's waiting for something to signal that this is it, that he'll disappear in a flash of mauve light and drives it home that there's no coming back from this. He doesn't. Instead, Vergil blinks, slowly, something familiar finally making an appearance in his eyes which clear out like some invisible switch has been flipped. He stares at Dante silently and without an expression at all for a long stretch of time, then blinks again. Dante hovers above him, fearing the worst and yet, inexplicably, after all the tragic stages of this play, hoping for something impossible, intangible.

It's only fitting − it's more painful than being flayed open by his nails −, that the first word Dante hears him say in ten long endless years is his own name.

“Dante,” Vergil rasps, offers it as a delicate benediction despite his voice being fucked to hell. It hits a nerve, fucks him up beautifully every time, to witness how pious he is while speaking it, even now: his focus on him is always absolute when he says it, even when his face is crumbling away as he speaks.

If this is a clone, an imitation, a delusion, it's more real than Dante himself − not that that would be the highest of bars, these days. The pull which has always silently existed between them is there, as strong and sure as ever. It's too complicated for him to define or even understand, he doesn't know how he senses it yet he does, better than anything else. Dante's eternal depravity announces its presence as well; Vergil's covered in Dante's blood now, too, hands red and splatters of it mingling with the blue on his skin, and it should not look even distantly erotic, but it does, sets a quiet fire in his blood. This is a mess. He is a mess. Nothing new under the sun.

His grasp on reality is fumbling at best. Which option is the one that finally breaks what's left of Dante; this genuinely being him or this being merely a figment of his vicious, vengeful imagination that's out to get him again? Because if this really is Vergil, there is decidedly something not okay with him.

Nothing about this is even remotely okay.

There's a surprised look on Vergil's face when the surface of it is hit by something small. It's most likely reflected on his, once Vergil's mirror. The impact raises a tiny powdery puff of loose skin, then another, then another, until there's a thin stream running down his chin and some of the red-blue stains have become smudged with the moisture. Dante realizes belatedly, distantly, that he's crying. “Devil may cry,” he thinks, wants to laugh but can't, he's busy crying. A tremble originating from somewhere near the end of his spine runs through his back and makes him hang his head lower, his vision blurring. He's wrecked by full-body shudders which make it almost impossible for his arms to hold his weight above what could be the reason for his grief, his reason for fighting even a long time after his spirit has left his physical being and he's nothing but skin, bones and nerve endings firing off into the void. He's crying and it's terrible and now that he's started, he doesn't know to begin stopping it.

He doesn't see Vergil's expression when he calls him again in a measured voice, but he does note how he grabs his wrist and presses his thumb against the pulse of his veins, first gently and then as a warning. It makes it worse, his eyes burn more: the first gesture is so reminiscent of the way he used to soothe him, to guide his wandering attention, to mark his territory, that in only makes Dante weep more heavily. He might even be letting out some kind of sounds now. Vergil apparently doesn't enjoy having to repeat himself any more than he used to, because then he is unceremoniously pushed to the ground into a pile of tangled limbs and agued trembling. The force of it knocks the breath out of him, and this constant deficit of oxygen is not going to do him and his lacking cognitive capabilities any favors. It still takes a while for him smother the tears out. He lies on his back, unable to force them to cling to the corners of his eyes. They're too heavy, stronger than him, so they fall until he's probably too dehydrated to produce more. It's pathetic, that's what it is, but what about him isn't, in general?

His sight finally clear, he inhales deeply and considers his options. If he stays down, maybe he misses Vergil flaring up again until it's too late to do anything about it and he can stop bullying his brains with all this thinking. Could be pleasant. Then again, if he has a chance to see him, even like this, deteriorating and possessed − well, he has enough regrets to last more than his lifetime, already.

Dante's always had this weird hyperfixation on Vergil's mouth. Even being repeatedly told they were identical as children, it seemed to him like Vergil's lips were a little fuller, a little redder, the cupid's bow a little more pronounced. Difficult to say if it was really like that, a hidden truth revealed to him thanks to his close inspection, or if he was simply staring at him long enough to start seeing things. The impression carried to their early adulthood, anyway, although it mutated into something morbid in his smutty teenage fantasies of a person Dante thought he never had the chance to become: how sweet he would feel and taste when kissed; his mouth forming a perfect little o when Dante'd blow him, his nimble fingers in his hair urging him to give more of himself to him; heated whispers against the shell of his ear, echoed in the kisses on his jaw, his neck, if only were he alive. While watching Vergil snarl after having told him “I miss you” when he, against all odds, wasn't dead, he realized how much cruelty and violence he hid behind the soft façade of his mouth. Now, when he gathers himself enough to be able to pick the useless piece of shit that is his body up from the ivory sand, he instinctively searches for it for some kind of clue about his state of mind. Vergil has retreated to another side of the clearing and is sitting his back against a trunk, stance still hunched beyond recognition. He is having difficulties with wearing the expression that is currently sitting on his face; the line of his mouth is severe in a manner that belies he would be pursing it or even biting his lips if he were anyone else and actually emoted things with his features willingly.

Dante wants to wipe his skin clean (_he wants to kiss his face_, _to_ _even out the roughness, to map the inexplicable differences_ _in his visage that is both similar to its forms in the past and also foreign_), but when he picks up a piece of Vergil's robe that's been ripped off during the scuffle and makes a move to get closer with his hand raised, Vergil flinches so violently that the echo of the sudden movement slaps Dante in the face. “_Don't touch me_,” he doesn't say, but the meaning is obvious regardless. That's a first − they've always been very tactile, both in their own way; Dante throwing himself at this twin and clinging to him like a notably obstinate and histrionic leech, Vergil, for his part, allowing the intimacy and laying small, deliberate touches on him, his physical displays of affection telling him in plain words what even a younger Vergil would only reveal in indirect words. It disorients him that he can't center himself by skin contact, now when he needs it the most because everything is making a valiant effort to get him to doubt the few things he believed he could be sure of.

“How are you not dead?” He has to ask, he has to know. There's nothing but this gut feeling of his to prove that it's him and not some impostor, maybe an incubus designed to assassinate him. He doesn't think it's intentional to be taken that way, that whoever has sent the apparition would have counted on him wanting to jump it and crying like a bitch while letting it fuck him when he maybe gets his shit even somewhat together at some point in the future. It, the thing he has for him, shouldn't be that apparent (_he sometimes wonders if it shows. It sometimes feels like it should, that he should be branded by the hot iron of his own burning shame so that everyone could see what he sees in himself. He deserves the disgust, theirs and his own and Vergil's_.), but sending a copy of his late twin to bluff him would be a highly effective plot nevertheless. He thinks he's been sneaky in his debauchery, though, and it just doesn't feel right to suppose that this connection between them could be counterfeited. Dante's dangling at the end of his rope, the noose around his neck tight but not tight enough, and the rope doesn't give to either direction (_wouldn't it be nice, to get hanged at last);_ he doesn't have the energy to fully doubt Vergil being alive and can't fully believe in him truly being alive, either. It's Schrödinger's Vergil, sitting neatly in the box now, claws retracted and ears relaxed, and as long as he doesn't look inside the box too carefully or smell the poison gas, he can be anything Dante wants him to be. At this point it might be easier if he just stayed dead for good, because it's not the despair that kills Dante the most, it's the futile hope, every time.

It's clearly something Vergil is not willing to talk about in any extent. He looks like he should be playing with the katana, swirling lazily artistic circles with it into the air with his trademark impenetrable nonchalance, but she's nowhere to be found and he's left to stare into nothingness. Instead of the solemn serenity it's supposed to portray, he just looks haunted.

“Rebellion only separated the artificial corruption from what was left of the demon and the man. I woke up in Hell, fought my way out and set out to get here. Here I am.” The amount of data he's leaving out is staggering, even without Dante knowing the exact scope of items omitted. The sting of this demonstration of his distrust isn't lessened by the fact that it's precisely what he expected.

“Alright, but what was that? The killing some weak demons with your bare hands thing?” Sure, there has always been a feline quality to him, whether it's purring in his lap as a child or battling with inhuman grace, a predatory intent. That's not what this is even remotely about, and it's scaring the shit out of him. He thought it was bad when Vergil kept displaying his impatience with the process of ripping open the fabric separating Hell from the human realm − he raised his voice in frustration, repeatedly! he let people sneak up on him, distracted and not guarding his six in his usual paranoid vigilance! he didn't make sure he had killed Dante dead with Rebellion in his hurry to rule the worlds! −, but if that was unnerving, he is running out of big words to describe the current train wreck.

“As it happens, I do not have Yamato with me. What was I to do?” Vergil is just as unwilling to divulge critical information as in his teens, and it actually might kill Dante this time around. Literally, if he is as out of control as he appeared to be earlier. Why is Dante's life nothing but a game of lesser of two evils these days? Let's see: either Vergil attacked him and those poor, insignificant slowpokes like a wild beast out of his own free will, because that's just something he does nowadays instead of giving his body to Mundus to do as he pleases with (_and hello there, that's a thought he doesn't need to explore further; that Mundus could've used him in other ways too, that Vergil might've let him, might have wanted him to_) and could do it again whenever, or then there's something that makes him go off the rails spectacularly every now and then. Great, just… great.

They're getting nowhere with this. Fuck if he isn't missing a Vergil that would deem him worth of talking to. That's ancient history now, so Dante's left with walls that are fragmenting but which he still can't breach.

“So, if we, for now, skip the whys and hows of you being _alive _\--,” his voice cracks, teary and ugly, but it's better to march on and not think about it, “then why are you here, of all places? I mean, I don't see it, but there must be something to this corner of Hell to make it worth your while.”

A graceful sniffle. “I think it is more surprising that _you_ are here, seeing how ardently you have always claimed to despise Father's heritance and our birthright.”

Dante's first instinct is to snap back at him for his usual prevaricating, but when he thinks about it for a second with his actual brain − what a weird feeling, that −, it's, in the end, fair enough a non-question. He really has made his feelings on Sparda's domain clear in the past. He thinks he even distinctly remembers yelling at him how he was becoming just like Sparda, all his vices and bloodlust without the tiniest bouts of humanity their father exhibited in not slaying every human he came across. Funny how that happened before Dante knew his exact plans of absorbing Sparda's leftover powers. So he explains the mission in Vie de Marli and leaves out all the embarrassing details about such uplifting topics as his rampant alcoholism and other suicidal tendencies. Maybe Vergil has the decency not to question the gaping rifts in his story and to avoid asking why he didn't return upstairs when he could've. Maybe he'll say he got lost. It's not like Vergil's opinion on him could get worse. It's not like he knows, himself.

Vergil coughs and hums his way through the report. “I see. It is a shame you are squandering your potential with matters of this caliber, but I suspect it is still better to have thwarted Argosax's delusions of grandeur at their inception.”

Dante refuses to be baited. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”

The withering look Vergil shoots him is effective even though his face is disintegrating around his eyes. Dante uses it to his advantage and locks their eyes into a staring contest. It seems to work for a while, but then Vergil turns his gaze away, outwardly uncomfortable. The twin he supposedly knew never stepped down from a challenge. His brother seems to get this too, because he smiles bitterly and says: “Argosax, as he was known among mortals, was a lesser demon, although many mistook him for a powerful one.” This is as apologetic as he gets.

An intense spell of coughing interrupts him. Dante waits for him to continue, forcibly patient, impotent. “It was, in fact, all due to his allegedly legendary durability and not any innate strength or ability,” he wheezes, sounding like he is a hair away from suffocating. He might as well be. “His only merit was to stumble his way here by happenstance after utterly losing a fight against a veritable demon and grasping the obvious.” His account more or less finished, he launches into a fit that is so brutal that Dante should be seeing shreds of his lungs by the end of it on his hands he can't quite raise to cover his mouth; as it is, they just waver above his lap, so thin that they ought to be translucent in the harsh light. He doesn't like the implications any of this has on Vergil's general health or the state of his body parts.

“You've never been shy about flaunting your knowledge in the face of my ignorance,” he tries to distract himself when Vergil finally lifts his head from bowing, looking despondent and so, so tired. ”What's the obvious advantage this literal hellhole has?”

“The underworld is a vast place that differs from the human sphere in many ways. For instance, time passes more swiftly in comparison in this realm. Here, it is particularly quick, which coincidentally means accelerated healing.”

That actually makes some kind of messed up sense, as much as anything demonic in nature can. As always, the answer still manages to multiply the questions. Vergil didn't mind explaining him things, once, so here goes nothing.

“Why's the growth of the trees so stunted, though? And shouldn't there be a lot of stuff growing here, with the speed an' all?”

“The energy required for healing must still be drawn from somewhere. _Ex nihilo nihil fit_ − nothing is born out of a vacuum. Sacrifices have been made,” he replies, distant and seemingly uncaring. Dante suddenly gets the feeling that the birches might not actually be mere birches, but some things are best left unexamined.

Well, that, at least, tells him how the bugs stayed alive, in some sense of the word, for so long. Still disturbing, but less so. Why the critters lying around them currently are all dead already isn't something he really needs to care about.

“Speaking of which; what do you need the healing for?” Vergil doesn't exactly shrug, but he makes a feeble movement that implies the answer to that should be apparent enough. True, but he doesn't have to be such an asshole about it. “Yeah, but what is that, exactly?”

It's just really difficult to figure out how it would all work in this case; how can any healing take place when there might be nothing left to heal? Dante suspects, unwillingly, that whatever it is that has brought his brother back to his pre-fall form, at least for the most part, has done shit all to fix his internal organs. Or regrow them, rather, since the Angelo didn't seem to have any. If nothing is born out of nothingness, there has to be something here one could convert into a functional body, right? Vergil wouldn't have wasted his energy by coming here, from god knows where, killing who knows how many enemies running into him, if he didn't believe there was something to this place that could cure him, right?

“Vergil?”

Vergil finally looks at him. It seems like he wants to say something, but he pushes his lips tighter together and faces the birches again. Blood out of a stone.

Storytime's over, fine. They need to move soon anyway because the corpses are starting to break drown. However powerful the remedial forces are here, their effect seems to disappear completely once Grim Reaper has paid a successful visit − apparently, they do nothing to slow down the decay. The smell emanating from the carnage is already disgusting, the punctured organs and decomposing pulp and tissue are starting to reek with a stench that's as thick as the swarm of flies which should be there but isn't. Vergil tries to hoist himself up − that, or he's getting epileptic again −, but he's down to his propped elbows before he can even lift himself half upright. The bloodbath and their friendly chat must have totally worn him out; there is no way he'll be walking anywhere in the immediate future. His brother won't display any vulnerability if he can avoid it, no matter the cost, so his small collapse speaks volumes.

Dante acts on his impulses again but raises his hands slightly as a sign of peace before approaching him. Vergil's eyes are hard and there's an air of stubborn, impotent fury on him, just the barest hint of it manifesting in his fingers curling slightly, the closest he comes to making a fist in anger. He fumbles again a bit, looking as deflated as a wet cat, but he must reach the same conclusion after he fails to lift himself up from his position. He looks at him, mouth making an unhappy turn, before he slumps and goes prone, seething with poorly restrained dissatisfaction. Dante hates his weakness as much as he does, although for different reasons, but staying in this spot isn't doing either of them any good; he has to confront it, as much as it upsets them.

He scoops his body to his arms. It feels more liquid than solid under the drapes of cotton − seems that he doesn't have the strength and wherewithal to tense his emaciated muscles, so he basically hangs on him like a listless drape too. Dante's strong so his weight shouldn't bother him in any case, but his eyes sting regardless when he is hit by the realization that half the mass he's carrying is from the heavy fabric − Vergil weighs next to nothing at all, almost as if he were entirely hollowed out. Dante can't cry now because he needs to see where they're going, but he keeps swallowing and swallowing uncontrollably while dragging them ahead. From the way Vergil shields his face from him, he has to know Dante knows this − as well as the fact that now he is not really an open book (_and Dante hasn't ever been particularly literate_) but less of an enigma in ancient dead languages that Dante could never begin to decipher, like he used to be, should be.

He's doing this bridal style, and it's a stupid thing to be wounded by; this is not the ceremony he had in mind while daydreaming of a golden hereafter, but here he is, here is Vergil, veiled in light colors and still heartbreakingly pretty even in his maladies and with his brand new, decrepit face. They no longer have their amulet and they've got no rings either, so the only matching thing they are wearing is the gore, more or less. All in all, it's par for the course for them. 

The aisle undoubtedly leads only to eternal suffering or whatever, but the only option the two of them have ever had is to head down nevertheless. Their saga is not a fairytale, there are no happily ever afters to be had and his misery over it is entirely useless.

He leads them to the direction which Vergil indicates with a virtually imperceptible tilt of his head, and sure enough, they come to another, tinier clearing with the smallest of springs languidly bleeding clear maybe-water in the middle. Smells like water, at least. There's still no undergrowth to be seen so he shimmies out of his coat − relocating his burdens from one arm to another is disturbingly easy − and lays it on the ground before pouring his brother on it. Vergil is shivering and his lips have taken a shade of blue, so he sits as close to him as he thinks he will allow him to. He hopes his body heat seeps into him despite the distance.

It has to be said at some point. “I killed you.”

Vergil arranges the cloth tighter against himself and looks at folds of cotton instead of Dante while speaking casually, unbothered. “Why are you so hung up about that?”

Dante can't hide his incredulous tone. “You're still every bit the prick I remember you being. Fucking incredible.” Does nothing really touch him? Being unmoved by Dante having to go through the shit he has is one thing, but if his own demise can't affect him any, there no way he'll ever be capable of feeling anything for Dante at all. As always, it's a losing game he's playing.

As always, he tries to cover he's hurt by lashing out. “I can't have this conversation, not when you're --“

“You should, while you still have the chance,” Vergil says conversationally. His face is particularly empty when he looks at the even surface of the well. “This is only going to get worse.”

When Dante, stunned by the words, finds his voice to question him further, Vergil is already unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, thanks for the kudos and bookmarks too! Judging by the word count and my updating schedule this far, I'm apparently more efficient at this writing thing when I know I'm not only doing it for my own amusement.


	7. vii. A Fairer Flame Did Not Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week on Dante Must Die: The Story − It Gets Worse. Happy 35K, though!

“And then?” he whispers, already sleepy. Makes his words slurry, but he understands him anyway, he always does. It's dark but with Vergil it doesn't feel bad, even when the lamp that he needs to see the words better isn't as bright as Dante's. He kinda wants to sleep already, it's so comfy, but the shadow of the bad dream is still lurking outside the fort they have built on Vergil's bed. It will go away soon, but not yet. It's very warm next to him, and his voice is calming even when he is speaking about monster dogs and ferrymen who herd the souls like sheep. He has heard stories from this book earlier and they've all been really boring, but this one is more fun and he's still sleepy. Some day, he'll get him to tell an exciting story.

Vergil tilts his head, measuring him for a moment, before continuing. Dante tucks his head closer to his chest and listens to his heart beating while he speaks.

“Aeneas sees Dido, the queen he fell in love with earlier, with a large wound in her chest wandering around the forest among the dead people. He tries to address her and tell her he is sorry to have left her behind, that he did not want to do it and did not think she would take her own life because of it, but she doesn't seem to listen. In fact, she looks the other direction when he speaks and starts to walk away from him, her face like stone. `Where are you fleeing? This is the last thing Fate lets me to tell you,´ he says, but she still leaves, like she can't hear him at all. He looks after her, or the shade of her, and cries bitterly.”

\--

Hours and hours and hours later, Vergil is still… not conscious? asleep? in a coma?

Now it's Dante sitting with his spine propped against a birch. The support is much needed because he is winded, on his last legs. The anecdote about Argosax and restorative energy apparently holds true on the physical side of things, yet emotionally Dante's somewhere in the neighborhood of post-Mallet stress disorder, if he ever left it.

This is something Dante needs the alcohol for.

Sucks to be him also in this respect, though. The amount of moonshine he has left, sloshing in the nondescript flask he keeps stashed near his heart − how he should feel about the fact that Vergil didn't eat it, none of his organs in fact, maybe only because he started going through seizures on the deciding moment for reasons mostly unknown, is currently under consideration − won't be anywhere enough to get him tipsy, never mind the merciful coma of inebriation that would sure be nice right about now. Speaking of which; could Vergil get drunk by proxy if he drank a drunken Dante dry? Considering how hard his biology of a half breed makes it for him to get plastered − it's hard work on top of his actual day job, really −, it does seem unlikely. He's sampled a lot of industrial strength rectified spirits as of late, denatured and plain, and the song remains the same even if the labels change: real intoxication demands dedication to the cause. Then again, he is thinking of this as an unnaturally robust man of perhaps not of a sound mind but at least of a sound body, which is even kind of muscular and all that jazz. Great for his tolerance, bad for his wallet. Vergil here, once again a petite lump in sand, is a different story altogether. Whatever's ailing him has burned away his muscles along with many other vital features. He's so frail; it might not take much to get him wasted. Alright, he wouldn't actually attempt it, to get him hammered, even if it would be tempting just to get him to _talk_, but seriously − would it help him if he did have a shot or more of Dante's blood? Could it have some kind of healing properties, too? You don't really have to sell self-destruction to Dante, he can cut and bleed himself just fine on his own without any incentives, thanks, but bonuses are always nice. Vergil is always a bonus, although rarely a positive one, these days.

This is the kind of crap he distracts himself with when he guards Vergil's sleep. He likes to think of it as sleep, at least. The options to that are not looking so hot.

This is a first, too. He hasn't ever imagined their childhood positions to be switched this way.

Dante can't remember the last time he was allowed to witness his brother with his guard down like this. He doesn't think it's intentional on Vergil's part; all of a sudden, he was out like a light, escaping the conversation he himself advised they should be having, damn him. It was either a pure accident or then Vergil has become more devious than expected, and also prone to uncharacteristic gambling: it's not like him at all to trust someone not to attempt any foul play while he's out. Now that Dante thinks about it, he still can't bring that many times of observing the sight to mind even when he traces his memories all the way back to their boyhood; it was always him waking up, having a bad dream and a bad time, and big brother already sitting wide awake by his side, ready to mollify him. When he had to start resorting to sneaking into his room to avoid detection and Mom punishing Vergil for something he hadn't asked for, he found him waiting, and when the nightmares would shake him back to him, he'd be prepared to divert his attention to faraway lands with a book and a song. Awesome, creepy instincts, there. The most recent sighting of a sleeping Vergil must have been when they had recently turned eight and he, bafflingly, caught a fever. Dante had cracked the door to his room open with tears of anxiety burning in his eyes and throat, the usual; but instead of greeting him attentively, Vergil remained a burrito of bed sheets even when Dante poked him in the side. Unwrapping the roll revealed him to be in deep but restless sleep, his forehead a stove, eyebrows creased in discomfort. His face has changed since, but the troubled arch of his brows is nonetheless a spitting image from that night.

He should not have gotten that high a temperature in the first place, but his body burned it out in the span of a few hours anyway, no harm done. If only were they so lucky this time. If, if, if. Dante lives in conditionals.

Only now that some of the excitement from earlier has started to dissipate − it's a bad choice of words since it was more about dying from acute wounds first and then from the whiplash of hell breaking loose from every direction, but Dante's not the poet here, how fucking ironic considering his very name −, he can actually start registering and categorizing details. It's admittedly pretty hard to miss that the veil of the lapel of the cape has now slipped completely from covering Vergil's face, but fuck you, he was trying to save his ward from being crushed under his weight after a potential fall caused by tear-related blindness. Anyway, Vergil's hair is more of a matted clump than the silk-glossy rays of spun moonlight they used to be − there are pieces of broken black branches hanging in the mess of it, pieces of demon casing, skin dust and boney sand along with the ubiquitous blood clinging to every visible inch of him (_what once was without a fail immaculate and cultivated is now stained by Dante and his_ _mistakes_). He doesn't exactly smell pleasant with all that gunk, but his own scent underneath the sediment of dirt is so overwhelming that he could be reeking of death itself and Dante wouldn't probably notice.

That's not a comforting thought. His carelessness and negligence of him have cost Vergil enough.

Once one of his favorite pastimes, watching him feels difficult now. He has to take in all the damage, all the changes he hasn't been there to witness developing, and acknowledge them. It's facing his legion of failures in a particularly physical form. Very clever of them, to assume the one frame he can't beat with his fists. A pretty picture, but ultimately brutal.

It feels intimate but undeserved. Like he's taken some liberty that isn't really meant for him, yet the injured party is none the wiser. Vergil is asleep and Dante's loud ogling doesn't seem to have any effect, yet something still tells him he's intruding upon a deeply personal thing. No one has ever claimed that Dante has any care for boundaries, though; and what is a violation of Vergil's privacy in the grand scheme of things, in the long list of trespasses against him? He lets himself have this, mostly because it's a punishment as well as it is a reward.

Putting an age to this shape of Vergil is a challenge. Nineteen feels intuitively right; he can't provide any more elaborate explanations for that estimate, only his hunch. One could expect that if he hasn't been aging, his looks would be a blast from their shared past, but that's not quite true. Their face has never been particularly round, but you could argue that they still had some baby fat clinging to it in their late teens. The only fat Vergil's body apparently contains now seems to have migrated to his lips, which makes sense if you buy into the conspiracy theory that this storyline is mainly designed to wreck Dante apart as effectively as possible. Aside from that, his face is collection of gaunt lines, thin, sharp edges, an interplay of white and dark smudges under his eyes. The worrying fractures are concentrated especially on his proud cheekbones, more pronounced than ever, but the wave of them has propagated all the way to the edges, to where his hairline begins. (He must be naked under the cloth. Extrapolating from his likewise cracked hands, the plague has to have spread to other parts of his body. He refuses to imagine it and definitely does not briefly consider lifting the veil to examine the damage closer.) Losing the great majority of his body weight doesn't explain why his eyes appear different, though. Vergil's eyes seemed to have changed shapes − how to describe it; maybe less almond shaped and yet bigger, vertically − when they were open, and there's something weird about his nose, too (shitty phrasing like this explains why he usually lets his gut to do the talking). His lashes are as maddening as before, at least; with the decadent mouth they bring a delicate feminine accent to an otherwise masculine set of features, somehow making him that much more handsome.

If he was actually healthy, he would be devastating to behold in a completely different sense. Maybe this counts as a silver lining − the latent horniness and the innate urge to fight him are difficult enough to fit together with the protection duty he has assigned to himself.

Vergil should look peaceful in his rest. Instead, he's just harrowed. Happy thoughts, happy observations.

So. Before this can get any more depressing, he could at least try to direct his attention to more neutral things. He wrings his hands, comes up short. What did they talk about earlier, again? Ah, yes, the whole “time passes more swiftly” thingie, let's do that next. If the sand in the hourglass is finer around here, how long has he been on this trip when measured in Earth terms? Are they talking about “years upstairs for a day spent here” type of a thing or does everything merely go twice as fast? An additional question up for consideration; does that play any role in anything?

(_How long has Vergil been in Hell, truly_?)

He doesn't feel it's particularly important to think about what has happened to _Devil May Cry _while he's been gone, but he grants Lady and Trish a thought. Morrison has never been dependent on him at all with his numerous other contractors, he might occasionally miss some high-end missions due to Dante's absence but that's about it, and although the women know how to pull their weight and his drunken ass too, having a fixed headquarters likely makes things easier for them − not to mention that Dante's pulled a lot of the bigger jobs, what with his reputation of a legendary demon hunter or something to that effect. For a moment he plays with the unlikely scenario that they might even miss him being there while he's dicking around in Hell but dismisses it just as quickly. No need to flatter himself. As far as he is concerned, they can take over the building and his enterprise if that's something they want to do. They'll land on their feet, no matter what.

Lucia might feel a bit guilty about it, but Dante already completed all his tasks pro bono; there's no obligation for him to feel too bad about it. She'll live, happy with her people and islands returning back to normalcy. Now that the oil drilling business has been abandoned by the previous entrepreneur, they could even make some decent money and rebuilt what Dante and other demons destroyed.

Well. Not counting them, who is going to even notice Dante's grand disappearing act? In the times of yore, the obvious answer would have been the city's numerous food delivery agents he kept in steady employment. After he got into the magical diet called severe depression and incapacitating alcohol dependency, a lot people must have been let go, though, so no warm feelings for him there. His clientele won't notice a thing; the sort of problems he solves tend to be once in a lifetime occasions for any real people. How many times are you going to have your lawn and garden shack raided by demonic sheep? If the answer is more than once or twice, it might be the time to entertain the thought of contacting a real estate agent and not an exterminator, since then the issue must be chronical and you are probably living next to an active portal. His digs are located in the middle of a mostly abandoned industrial quarter − no neighbors. He hasn't been going out for drinks in ages and is still a pure, innocent virgin, pushing his thirties − no drinking buddies and no lovers or one-night stands. His genetics make sure nothing physically harming sticks − no family doctors.

What a lonely existence. That's what literature folks would call a superfluous man. Dante just calls it being subhuman.

Seeing that Vergil is still hosting a visit from the sandman, what's next in the program? It would likely be beneficial to analyze their earlier discussion − Dante is still cross and using the word loosely. “I woke up,” he said, “separated”, but what on earth does that mean? He's been quite convinced that the only things he separated that night were Vergil and/or the Angelo and his life. If he skips over the question of where that resurrection took place − in Hell, yeah, obviously, but does Mundus haunt a castle here and did Vergil end up in his hands in the beginning of his comeback? −, Dante would like to know _when_ that was. Did his sibling escape, if there was need for that, while Dante was taking his sorrow out on Mundus himself, or has he been wandering only for some days? How long will it take for this place to do its work and heal the damage caused during that time?

Makes his head hurt, the brainwork. Better to focus on counting the cracks on his skin and hoping one of them will develop some psychic healing powers sometime soon.

\--

At some point in his staring, Dante realizes he's left the bike behind. It must still stand in the previous meadow with the corpses of the demons Vergil competently butchered. The smell has to be nice at this stage. Figures. He didn't pay anything for it and he has no plans for making any progress from here, so losing it doesn't really matter to him. Then again, any advantage offered is a plus in a situation as fucked up as theirs. With his shitty luck, they're going to need to move quickly at some point, and then they'll both die a miserable death because Dante was too lazy and nervous to walk for a few minutes and some fortunate demon which just happened to be passing by stole the ride while he was here, twiddling his thumbs like the useless waste of skin he is. Well, miserable death is dawning on the horizon anyway, that's just how these things go for him, but if there's any way for him to up the chances of Vergil seeing this excursion through, he has to take it. Maybe he really should fetch it before it is too late.

Can Vergil be left alone, though? The hacking has ceased at least momentarily, but it is touch and go if that's a positive sign or not. It would be nice to know what's wrong, but beggars can't be choosers and obtaining information from him is akin to fighting for scraps. When Dante strains his senses and focuses on their surroundings, he doesn't sense anything for miles around them, no other demons (and that's one thing to ponder while idle; would seeing Vergil in his more demonic form prove it's him? Or; can shapeshifters assume someone's trigger and use it? Could he even do it, in this state? He didn't need to waste time and energy for that earlier, seeing that he wiped the floor with demons and also Dante with what appeared to be very human hands and teeth, sure, but he seemed fully burned out after the feat) to threaten his slumber.

This has all the makings of a thing that has an endless potential to go to hell in plenty of different, interesting ways. No use denying it; that's what heartwarming family reunions tend to be like with this damned bloodline − the only thing missing is Sparda prancing his merry way here and announcing the rumors of his demise have been slightly exaggerated in the sense that there are religions built on the exact premises of him having died as the hero he never was. He really hopes they won't be doing that today. To make it easier on himself now, he could just turn, walk to the bike, if it's still there, and mount it and drive away without looking back. The problems would solve themselves or they wouldn't, but Dante would probably never have the slightest idea of the outcome. The thing to weigh here is whether the uncertainty would be easier to bear than bearing witness to the events unfolding currently or not. If he had any luck ever, it would play out so that Vergil would chase after him and kill him himself for being a quitter, but it's hard enough to pretend he would truly consider leaving; he won't waste his own energy to try and delude himself into believing he'd come to him for any reason, even if he survived this.

Dante sighs and picks himself up. The act of straightening his back makes a loud crack; must have really been a while if sitting has been able to affect someone like him. When he turns to the direction he is mostly sure they came from, it's there, though, the bike, leaning against a tree trunk on the edge of the clearing like it's supposed to be there. Dante stares.

He has no recollection of leaving his brother's side. He hasn't had any reason to, and the one he has scraped together a minute ago is the only one he can come up with under the current circumstances. Is he losing time and his mind for real now? He's suspicious and disturbed − by himself, by the motorcycle, by Hell? Hell if he knows, himself − but a quick examination of the offending vehicle reveals nothing incriminating. The bike stays put, innocuous, lets him inspect it. Nothing amiss under the trunk, under the wheels, nothing wrong with the engine. Rapping his knuckles against the chassis only makes the metal echo. He goes through the same scans, more thoroughly now, takes his sweet time. Nothing out of the ordinary.

This is not good, not good at all.

He's sure he explicitly made the decision not to take it with him to carry Vergil. He needed two hands for that. He used them, the both of them. Why is the bike here? Since when has it been here? He's been awake round the clock and would have detected any outsiders transporting the chopper here, hasn't he, wouldn't he have?

He can't ask Vergil; he's been asleep for a worryingly long stretch of time − it feels like several days and nights and Dante can't begin to guess how that converts to the calendar they use on the surface −, and it probably isn't a great idea to give him any extra cause for suspicion, not with how unpredictable he is now. It's not even about appearing weak in his eyes; going on and on about teleporting bikes could paint him a potential threat. This kind of instability has the potential to turn dangerous, and the risks Vergil takes are controlled and calculated. On his arms he was so fragile he would have turned to dust should Dante have dropped him to the ground, but he's witnessed him decimating a horde of demons, too (if it wasn't all a fever dream like a part of him still assumes). Maybe he wakes up and goes straight into berserk mode, having reloaded his batteries, if Dante shows signs of being a stark raving lunatic. Being shred to pieces by him or what at least deceptively looks like him is one of the most pleasurable ways to go down here, but Vergil needs someone to look after him.

As freaky as it is, this is out of his hands for now. For the lack of anything more productive to do, Dante drags the bike next to where his brother is busy being passed out so that he can simultaneously keep an eye on it and the pile of cloth. It's a bit unnerving to sit down again and turn his back to its previous spot. There's nothing there but rotting cadavers, he knows it, and yet.

Creepy.

It's also unnerving that Vergil's skin isn't doing any better even though they've been chilling out here for ages. A large part of the injuries must have come from his attack on Dante, now that he thinks about it. He shouldn't be doing that, all things considered. Thinking only ever makes things worse.

Maybe it's because he has to gather some of the healing power before it can be used; maybe the magical remedy kicks in with a delay. Maybe Dante will be seeing the changes only after Vergil wakes up.

Vergil wakes up with a loud gasp. Or that's what he thinks, at first. His blue eyes fly open, but the stiffness of his body and the glazed film covering his unfocused gaze give it away soon.

Dante knows his own nightmares. He can't imagine what a man like Vergil, who must have seen unimaginable horrors during his research on the arcane and during his stint as a fallen darkslayer, would have bad dreams about.

All in all, it doesn't take an observative person to see he's not enjoying what he sees playing on his retinas. Damn, Dante is getting tired of having to observe Vergil in various stages of suffering.

“Vergil. Vergil, wake up,” he tries. He's itching to get closer, to dispel the night terror with some gentle shaking, but it might do more harm than good at this point, with how skittish his sibling is. Dante's not sure if he'd be as (un)fortunate as he was earlier, should Vergil attack him again.

There's that wild look in his eyes again: he's not looking at anything, not even inwards, but every cell in his body seems ready to bolt. There should be pearls of anxious sweat running on his temples, but he's dry all over. The stillness is beginning to look as disturbing as his relentless twitching and convulsing was. His palms are open and resting on his lap, and when Dante can tear his attention away from Vergil's horrifying expression, he sees him holding a small orb hovering on them. It's the size of an eyeball, blackest of blacks but with a dim purple light flickering on and off in the middle.

Right, it's time for bizarro world again.

Dante moves to get closer, but this is where it becomes apparent that their parents only had poise and a normal sense of balance to give to one child; he stumbles on Rebellion, inexplicably lying flat on the edge of the spring. That's not where he left it, not when he was only distantly aware of bringing the arm with him in the first place. He's sufficiently beside himself for this small disturbance to be enough to upset his equilibrium completely, which results in him to keeling over into the body of hopefully-water.

It's as shallow as it looks like, maybe up to his knees in the deepest part in the middle, but the fall makes a respectable splash anyway. The spatter reaches Vergil, dousing him none too gently, and in the blink of an eye he's back to what Dante hopes is himself, the weird globe disappearing in a violet blink, reminiscent to a suggestive wink. For a whole second there's a vacant expression on his face like he doesn't know where he is, who he is, what he is, currently or in general. The sight of Dante scrambling up from his stomach to two shaky feet, properly soaked, seems to explain some things to him, because some of the sudden tension leaves his person and then he is just Vergil again, albeit visibly drained.

It's water, by the taste of it, just your plain old water. Dante's glad to confirm this as he coughs it out of his lungs. There's not even that woodsy or metallic or moldy tinge to it one could expect from a body of water bubbling away in the middle of a forest. Could be that the birches are actually made of people, the netherworld's own Soylent Green or something. Whatever. If he dies by inhaling a clear liquid, he's done himself and his vices proud. Back to more important things.

Back to Vergil.

The water is dripping from his head in small droplets. It looks like it should sting because of the splits, but Vergil doesn't apparently even notice. His face doesn't turn into mud for the most part, just the dust that's loose already, so his skin must have some porcelain-like coating. He tries to wipe the some of the mess away with the side of his palm, but his hand doesn't seem to cooperate. He ends up almost flailing, movements disquietingly mechanic, before folding the hand away, a flat bearing in his eyes that he still has trained on Dante.

“Are you alright?”

Vergil doesn't answer, just keeps looking at him like he hasn't said anything. It must be something in the genes, hereditary, the assholishness.

“Alright, don't dignify that with an answer, then, see if I care. “

Then, because he actually does care, he says “Ready to explain what just happened? Besides you obviously having a nightmare, I mean.”

This time, to Dante's surprise, he opens his mouth. Instead of speech, he chokes out more coughs, somehow simultaneously wetter and drier than before. So much for the miracle cure.

He doesn't know what it is, but it has gotten worse.

He keeps at it long enough that they've both probably forgotten what Dante was attempting to have a chat about. Vergil seems distantly surprised to notice that there's no blood on this palm when he removes it from covering his mouth.

“Right. So how about you tell me what happened after our spat on Temen-ni-gru, so I could help you with whatever it is that you're planning?” he settles for asking once the spell winds down.

He still doesn't respond, just picks at an unraveling edge of the robe uninterestedly. Dante wasn't hoping for much and he's still disappointed. At least he got them to exchange a couple of sentences earlier. The unhappiness creeps into his voice as an annoyed note.

“Can you even hear me?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Can you speak?”

“_Yes_,” he hisses between his teeth. Dante pushes on.

“Great. What did he do to you, exactly?”

“Mundus,” he supplies when Vergil raises his eyes, a slightly questioning quality to them.

For a moment his face is blank, blanker than his usual perfectly unreadable detachment, so blank that it looks like he actually has a distorted expression going on, somehow. It's highly discomforting, but if Dante has to deal with some inconvenience for his sake, then that's his cross to bear.

“If you just told me how he created the Angelo, I could try and see if there's anything I've seen before to it.“ Dante can buy that he's too insignificant to him to be let in on his plans under normal circumstances, but the way Vergil's health is depleting, this is an emergency of the highest magnitude. Surely, he must realize that even Dante with all his faults is better than nothing, that he could help him somehow, in the smallest of ways, at least tidy up his face properly --

Vergil snaps, honestly angry: “_I do not** remember**._” There are no echoes here at all, but the confession still rings in the air.

Before he can digest the contents of the retort, Dante gets stuck on the fact that he, in all actuality, managed to rile him up enough for him to lash out like that, to grit the sentence out like an expletive. Once upon a time, causing such an outburst was an accomplishment that took days and days of relentless prodding, careful plans to maximize his annoyance by hiding his beloved tomes, hollering any dumb thought straggling into his head out loud and gluing himself to his side with even greater enthusiasm than usual (“_You are twins, not Siamese,” Mom would scold them. Conjoined, Vergil would_'_ve never been_ _able to leap away from him.). _Now, he's done it inadvertently and with only a couple of lines, without really meaning to. There's an unpleasant shiver running down his spine, akin to someone pouring ice-cold mercury on him. This isn't right, there's something seriously wrong with him.

There _is _something seriously wrong with him, even according to his own words − now that's a bad sign if any. They must be true; Vergil might withhold any given scrap of knowledge if it pleases him, but him lying by means other than omission… It's just unthinkable. It's not plausible, not if there are any specks of his deep-seated personality remaining. Admittedly, he's presumably lied to humans on some occasions, but that has more to do with the fact that he'd prefer to keep the interaction as short as possible, and if boldly saying “no” to their faces would cut it short, he'd probably do it, because humans have never been important enough to make an impact on his already weighted moral scale. Mother was a special case in that aspect, and even that was probably mostly a result of Father, an actual demon, deeming her worthy of his attention, at least for a fleeting moment. Everything has something to do with demon bullshit to him.

It must be true he's missing time. To what extent? Does he remember how he got to the underworld after Dante did the thing? Does he remember where that was and how he got here? Does he remember maiming his little brother a moment ago?

How much does he remember about Dante, exactly?

He ought to be unrelenting by asking more questions and demanding answers: What else doesn't he remember? What was that strange little ball? Does Vergil even know he was holding it? What are all these different episodes about, truly?

He never gets to it, because suddenly Vergil falls. It's not as dramatic as it should be; there's a light thud that Dante only hears because he's a demon with overtly alert senses that are also obsessively attuned to his brother, specifically. It's more like he just floods to his side like a dropped piece of flowy fabric and then stops moving. Dante's already tasting the sour, astringed battery acid tang of panic − is it another fit, is he already d--

“Vergil! Fuck, are you alright, Vergil--”

Vergil budges slightly so that he's lying on his side instead of the boneless heap he originally slumped into.

“No,” he states matter-of-factly. From this angle Dante doesn't have access to his head and his usually understated body language is concealed by the heavy cloak. The dry honesty of the statement still shines through. “But you already knew this.”

How bad does this have to be that Vergil's so willing to set aside his pride, his need for secrecy, for him to avoid any avoiding?

For someone who always claims to expect the worst possible outcome, Dante is remarkably surprised by how quickly Vergil's condition is deteriorating. This is more what Dante imagined Hell to be like. Feared it would be in his fever dreams. It's so fucked up that it's starting to seem more and more likely he's really witnessing his actual brother in his actual pains, but he's so fragile it's all the more difficult to believe it could have been him under the impierceable exoskeleton of the fallen warrior. Dante can say whatever he wants about the Angelo, but at least it was strong. Vergil, well, Vergil _isn't_.

He's good at multitasking, it seems; now he's both worried to death and also pissed off to a degree only his twin can make him reach. “Like hell I do! No, listen, I don't know shit, because you don't tell me anything even if it kills you!”

Vergil doesn't react, not visibly, so he pushes on. To hell with it.

“Fine, I buy it, let's assume you remember nothing before you got it into your stubborn head to come here. Fuck it, at this point I don't even give a shit if you don't remember me, that's water under the bridge for now,” he says, not stopping for breath, the accumulated frustration carrying him onwards. “But you told me you knew about this place, so you had to have a plan. Give me something here, something to work with. This alone doesn't seem to do shit for you, so what do you need? What's here that'll help you get better?”

Vergil lets out a shaky breath. “Nothing,” he says, a hint of chagrin making its way also to this demeanor.

“Neither of us has the juice to make a scene right now, but I'll do it if you make me, just watch me. You're not getting rid of me, so what if you just made your life easier? Let's begin with something easy: tell me what you planned to do here.”

No reaction.

“You're honestly killing me here, Verge.” He's seething, and here it is, the anger he's completely been missing for months. Finally experiencing it doesn't feel as good as he hoped it would.

“You misunderstand. There is nothing I can do.”

“Didn't you say that this place heals really well? You're there, you've made it all the way here. Why the fuck are you going on about giving up now?”

“There is only so much anything can do.” Vergil is staring at the trees, seemingly bored. Like this is inconsequential to him.

“It's not talking if you technically make words but don't actually say anything. I can't do this if you keep this up.“

He's reduced to begging. Took a lot less time than he would've thought beforehand, but it's not like Dante has any personal dignity to spare. If his brother demands it, then he will do it.

“Come on, talk to me, Vergil. Please.”

Vergil props himself up painstakingly, looks him in the eye and waits for him to calm down a bit before speaking.

”Dante,” he says calmly, simply, gently, ”I am dying.”

_Yes, yes he is. Vergil is dying._ In there somewhere, Dante already knew this.

He already knew this. He already knew this when he first laid his gaze on his eyes and saw them practically dead. When Vergil couldn't face him. When Vergil couldn't stay awake. He already knew this but it's one thing to be vaguely aware of it and to hear him confirm it in cruel explicitness. Vergil's not one to sugarcoat his words and Dante's not someone to need to have the truth cushioned by platitudes, but. Fuck.

He would love to make him take it back and deny it. He'd prefer to believe in this being some kind of elaborate ruse, that it cannot have been his masterplan to crawl here through hell and high water and then just topple over, belly up, die. That's not what his brother, always the strategist, does. But sincere like this, there's no doubting him.

Vergil has the fucking gall to look the slightest bit of apologetic when Dante scrambles to him to be able to see his face better. Like it's something to pity Dante for, a mild inconvenience, maybe; like it doesn't touch him, Vergil, at all. This fucking _son of a bitch _\--

Dante stops himself short from grabbing his brother by the lapels or whatever the bundle of fabric should be called and shaking him when it registers that his lovely vibrant infuriating mouth has turned the same shade of washed-out colorlessness his other body parts have been painted with. Vergil notices the stare and raises his shaking fingers to his lips, touches them and makes a practically silent “oh”. His anger crumbles until it reveals the cold desperation that was there in the core all along.

“There must be something, anything.” He doesn't recognize his own voice.

“The artificial corruption was separated from what was left,” Vergil repeats his words from earlier. Looks like it's painful for him to speak and his speech is sticky and stiff, but he does it nevertheless. “What was left, however, was not that much. It had caught the decay, let it spread organically and replace the natural. The healing, at this point, is merely slowing it down from taking over the last part.”

Dante perceives himself opening his mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Dante. Nothing is born from a vacuum. _There is nothing left to replace._”

Yeah. He knows.

He knows.

When Vergil starts to wheeze and cough, he knows it will take him a long time to stop. He should try and give him some comfort, but gravity keeps him rooted on the ground. (_If he didn't have Mundus to exterminate, he'd probably still be rooted on the floor in the room they met for what was back then the last time_.) Eventually, the silence seems to blare louder in his ears than the hacking.

Vergil curls his finger almost invisibly. It makes for a poor come hither gesture, but it's not like Dante needs more of an invitation when it's Vergil summoning him. He goes.

Vergil shifts, looks at him, almost-nods. Dante sits next to his lying form carefully even when he's absolutely done in and done for (_Vergil's so thin, even with the thick coat of cotton_), almost touching, a hair's width between them. Vergil makes a subdued, unhappy “nnn” tone. Dante stills, then budges until he's also on the ground, facing Vergil's back. Vergil repeats the command, so he slips closer, carefully, carefully, Vergil's back snugly against his chest, his arms wrapped around his upper body, almost lean enough that he's hugging his own limbs against himself. His skin is cold and rough, as predicted, when Dante presses his face against the back of his fractured neck, otherwise imperceptible trembles vibrating against his lips.

This time he doesn't even bother to attempt pacifying the trembles rushing through him before the hot tears come.

Time passes. A minute, a week, a year, a lifetime, and he just holds on, tries to absorb the chill and the rot into himself but only manages to make Vergil feel his own grief, to drown out the minute twitches of his body with the violent jitters his body produces. The wetness dries, but the cold remains. Through it all, Vergil's there, a dimming light in the darkness.

He's there, with him, like he always was, in the nights of their shared childhood. He wants to comfort Vergil so much that it should be enough to kill him too, but it's Vergil comforting him, as it has been from time immemorial, even when they both know Dante can't get rid of this by waking up. Judging by how close he lets Dante, he hasn't entirely made his peace with it either. No man is an island, and while Vergil in his prime came close, and even though he'd undoubtedly be ready to do this alone now, at least he's happy to accept a convenient heat source. As always, Dante needs him more than he needs him.

Hugging him close, he doesn't feel bones, even when there's nothing, no layers of subcutaneous fat, to separate his skin from them, even though his hands and face look like the tissue underneath is resting on them. Inside, there's just something stiff enough to pass for flesh. For the first time it dawns on him that he hasn't heard the pulse of Vergil's heart beating, not once since Temen-ni-gru. It's only his own veins circulating blood, streaming in his ears, his own breath and the thin rasping of Vergil drawing air. He doesn't know where it goes − it could come out unchanged, the breathing merely a leftover reflex at this point. Now that he's forced himself to think about it, he can't find a vein coloring his brother's complexion, even though they should be highly visible under his sickly paleness.

It reinforces his theory of this being Vergil in name only. For all intents and purposes, it could be that he's just a bag of skin, filled with hot air and voodoo bullshit, a zombie. Like the phantom of the magma spider he had a row with, back on the Dumary islands, only marginally more talkative and slightly less belligerent. He could be one of Mundus' sock puppets: funny, a literal dream come true. This is him laughing. Truth to be told, nothing has confirmed thus far that the Angelo really was alive or that it was Vergil alive within the monster. He could have been factually dead and just hanged along, strings or no strings.

What is real, anyway? Is Dante real? Is the sand underneath them real if it's made of the bones of millions and millions of men and demons? Is it sufficient that Dante buys into it being his long lost brother, or does the being in his embrace have to believe it is Vergil, too?

Doesn't matter, at this point.

The words, once familiar, come to him unexpectedly. Like he's just whispered them to him, under the blanket, his racing pulse slowly relaxing under the nearly hypnotizing cadence of his voice. It's dumb, it's useless. Vergil hates meaningless gestures. He breathes them against the nape of his neck devotedly, as if he's praying, as if he had something equal to Vergil he could offer as a sacrifice at a going rate.

_“navis, quae tibi creditum _

_debes Vergilium; finibus Atticis_

_reddas incolumem precor_

_et serves animae dimidium meae.”_

He can feel Vergil's sad little smile even when he can't view the visual. His pronouncement must be shot to hell after all these years, and he knows some words are sometimes said differently than they are written because the uppity meters demand that nonsense, but it feels like Vergil understands him anyway, broken like this, like they're back to speaking the same language that flowed between them in their youth, in words and gestures and thoughts. If not, at least he's having a laugh at Dante's expense; butchering of Latin, on the house.

_I beg, save the half of my soul. _He repeats the last line in his mind so many times that it stops resembling words. _I beg._

But, unlike in the rhyme, in this miserable corner of Hades there's not a boat to take him to greener pastures, to which he could dedicate his pleas. There's nothing but this slow decay, although even with the power Argosax capitalized on, it's not really that slow at all. Dante hasn't understood his sibling in years, he hasn't let him, but in the face of this utter, crushing powerlessness he might, for a moment, understand the feeling of craving more raw strength at any cost.

In the silence, he wants to tell him everything. The stories he has spun for them, for their future. The happy ones (the ones he's spent more time longing after than he has can honestly admit, even when he supposedly had grown up and realized his childhood dreams were just that, flights of fancy); them running into each other in the middle of a busy street from a bad romcom, Vergil mysteriously not dead like he should have been since he was killed at the tender age of eight, and deciding to get hitched in some nameless country in South America or wherever remote enough that would still simultaneously be okay with gay marriage. Or alternatively, Dante coming to the office after a long day of whacking demons to find him already there, waiting to tell him that he's given up trying to become the regent of the infernal regions and possibly also the human lands just to be with him, that he'll never even erect the Babylon tower of infinite suffering. Or then Dante actually rubs his two brain cells together and the resulting fire illuminates to him that Vergil's planning to jump from the edge of said tower and then he just prevents it somehow − it's not like he isn't the most stubborn bastard ever once he's set his mind on something, but there must have been _something _he could have done, and in this alternative universe he gets it, doesn't let himself let him down once again… And then they live happily ever after, never mind that Dante has no idea what that could be like − he just knows that it won't be happening if Vergil's not there with him, and any talk about harmful codependency is coming some thirty odd years too late. Too little, too late: that's Dante's life and choices, in a nutshell.

He also wants to tell him what it has been like without him. Moving forward without moving on. The guilt eating him alive. The wishful daydreams collapsing upon themselves like neutron stars, one after another, until he is figuratively left with dumb ashes on his tongue, mixed into the rain falling on Temen-ni-gru, and more literally with nothing but the need to hit the bottle.

That he loves him. That he has been in love with him from the minute he understood the concept, and that he still is in love with him, doesn't know how to be any other way. Doesn't actually want to, even if it would have made and would make things easier, because it has been a part of him for so long that he wouldn't recognize himself without it. Because there is nothing else to him, honestly.

“How could you do this to me?” he wants to ask, now when Vergil can't read his expression, only his voice. He could still detect everything he'd need to − Vergil's the one you need maps and commentaries to interpret, Dante is simple. Dante's also a coward, though. He won't. He just hates himself, quietly, bitterly, for being like this.

It's his greediness raising its ugly head again; now it's not the time to be selfish, he can't make Vergil dying to be about himself. He acknowledges he has been doing this pitying himself thing endlessly for years and years on end by now, but he has to let it go. Dante can't be greedy now, to burden Vergil with his shortcomings. He has suffered enough.

Although he was apparently fine with virgin sacrifice and whatnot, he still suspects his brother was ultimately a victim of Dante's bottomless gluttony. Dante wanted too much, senselessly, unreasonably, excessively. He should've been sated with his brother being his brother, alive and existing, somewhere; yet he longed for more more more, the closeness, the fights, the connection, and ended up being blinded by his own greedy emotions. He could see the fall coming, now: the way his eyes darted briefly to the edge, the unfamiliar hesitation in his movements. The resolved tick of his jaw. He should've forgotten about what he wanted and focused on what Vergil would have needed him to do. Too late to make amends now, he has no illusions about that, but he can at the very least refrain from causing unnecessary strife.

(“_Also_,” supplies his inner voice, the one that speaks like Vergil used to,” _you are scared he will be repulsed, that he will send you away and deny you his last moments. Why do you keep lying to yourself, Dante_?” It's getting rusty, that doesn't even hurt in comparison to the fact that Vergil's doing what apparently he can best.)

He closes his eyes and tries to focus on the sensations his nerve endings are bombarding him with. In and out, Vergil cramming a superficial puff of air inside himself. When he meditates like this, it is like they are floating in a void, even when they are surrounded by an unkind light and reflecting sand.

Dante had a dream like this once. They were somewhere, the exact place unimportant, tangled into each other, somehow with the knowledge that Vergil was on the verge of quickly forthcoming death. In a dream, for your regular person, there should be no cause for fear whatsoever, but that was never the case for him and his psyche. A dream, a nightmare; the difference is a line in running water to him. It was one of the worse ones: he's done everything there is to do to a person to him in some dreamworld or other − killed, kissed, punched, proposed to, lopped off into pieces, dismembered, forgiven, forgotten −, but he hated how it was his own imagination taking him away from him like that. Like this.

He feels the featherlight touch of Vergil's hand against his. He doesn't leave it there, but a layer of dust on the back of his palm proves that it happened. Dante waits.

“There is a tree,” he begins with a low voice.

It's hard to hear him, even pressed together tightly like this. He speaks so slowly, has to articulate every syllable so carefully. It has already become a small miracle that he can talk at all. Without this healing thing he'd already be, well, he doesn't need to spell it out to himself.

Dante shuffles himself up to face him, because he instinctively knows this is something important, something monumental, and he has only this chance to get it right. They can't afford him missing what he has to say.

Vergil searches his face, takes it all in; his tiredness, his reddened eyes, his unsteady inhales. There is a lot that has changed in Dante from their identical appearance at nineteen, too, if Vergil remembers it. He acts like he is memorizing it, all the imperfections and signs of wear. He accepts them, seals the information somewhere deep. Closing his eyes, he lets a deep breath out. When he looks at Dante again, something in his face breaks. The corners of his mouth twitches downward in pain, then his lips form a light smile in some kind of resolution. In a flicker of strength his eyes clear, a shadow of the steel they used to enclose flashing in them. This is his brother, resolute.

“The legends say the fruit it bears can heal even mortal wounds, grow missing limbs anew. “ And this is where he feels the dangerous flutter of hope burning in his chest, remains of something that he didn't know he still had, that he shouldn't have. There must be a but buried here, a draconian condition, an unreasonable price to pay, but he can't honestly claim there's something he wouldn't sacrifice for this, for him. Dante likes to tell himself he has lines he won't cross, that in spite of his demonic roots, he is human under the inhuman visage. That he tried to prevent Vergil and the repugnant joker type from enslaving both realms for any other reason than the fear of being abandoned. He likes to believe his own claims most of the time, but now, crawling in Hell with a dying brother on his arms, he, too, sees himself clearly. A brutal picture, not pretty, but sharp and accurate. Let the world burn; he has no honor in this.

Just a desperate man, willing to offer up everything.

Vergil's rasping voice is dark and soft, his tone echoing the one he used once upon a time to placate him. That could be the worst thing about this; that he's so calm.

“Mundus, however, has made it barren. It is impossible to make it bloom or to harvest the fruit.”

This, this is Mallet island all over again. All Dante ever wanted handed to him, but it's all twisted and used and abused.

Beyond repair.

(_Dante knows, he knows_.) He's still smiling. “There is nothing we can do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem is Horace again, Odes 1,3 (also used back in chapter 1):
> 
> \--  
“Oh, boat, you must carry  
to the ends of Attica Vergil, (who is)  
entrusted to you; I beg;  
and thus save half my soul."  
\--


	8. viii. Dead Sparrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rating has gone up, not necessarily for any particular reason. It's going to happen at some point, so might as well do it now. Also, while I've decided to be stingy with the tags, I felt gore would probably be appropriate, all things considered (also pining, because that's always a thing with these idiots).
> 
> (Insert general disbelief about this being 40 000 words already here)

Vergil was right. (_Vergil's always right.)_

Vergil's getting worse.

Vergil is dying. There are no prettier ways to say it.

Dante doesn't, say it. Refuses to think about it, even when the coughs attacking Vergil with an accelerating frequency now rattle his body too, his palm getting filled with fine dust when he tries to lay his hand against his cheek in cold comfort. Some things don't need to be said aloud to become true.

They've gotten back to their earlier position of Dante spooning the reed of his brother against him. In their bubble of wordless silence, he's taken to untangling the felted strands of his hair from each other, picking up the detritus interlaced into the mess. He's not speaking as someone who can judge others for their appearance, not with his own habit of hiding behind the unkempt curtain of his fringe whenever possible; just another thing to note, to categorize about him. It's grown into rather long a mane, he can see that when he gets it straightened out, bit by bit. It probably isn't possible in the underworld, or at least in this corner of it where there is no actual sky or clouds, but it feels weird that isn't raining. It always rains and thunders when they meet, these days. Those memories don't come to mind without a gnawing ache. He almost likes the thought of it now, though, the water pouring down Vergil's face − in this fantasy of his, maybe also washing away the dark, disfiguring cracks, revealing intact skin − cleaning his hair, making it shine again. Would look so sexy that way, frankly. He'll never see him like that; Vergil will never experience a rain shower in his lifetime, what's left of it. Dante crushes the shard of chitin he's plucked loose between the tips of his fingers and blows the dust into the air.

Doesn't get windy down here, either. Still life inside an aquarium (probably the right term for what he's thinking of would be terrarium, but cut Dante some slack, he's coming apart here). He tucks a loosened strand behind Vergil's ear, idly wondering how seeing the auricle cracked only registers as a dull beat of his heart. Getting numb already. A good sign or a bad one?

(_Vergil at nineteen was unpredictable and unfamiliar in his sloppy volatility but also magnetic in particularly painful way. When he thinks of him in the rain, though, it's still their meeting when they were eighteen that he remembers first, instinctively. The skies had opened above him hours ago and he'd been soaked to the bone for hours, but in his all-out insobriety he didn't truly realize how stubbornly the locks of his hair got stuck to his face and how his drenched clothes clung to his skin until he saw these things mirrored on the body of the ghost in front of him. It spoke like he had, voice a bittersweet reflection from the past, only more intense, dark, mature. It nailed the haughtiness as well; it had addressed him like they had only parted some minutes ago, like there weren't years of loneliness separating them − permanently, as it later turned out._

_The ghost, droplets embracing his lashes and clutching the edges of his lips, only truly turned into Vergil to him with the spontaneous sneer at his unprompted confession of longing. Showing too many teeth, expressive mouth deforming into a sanguinary shiv. The image sticks with him fresh as a wound long after Vergil has left him under the bleeding skies. It's the first time the unimaginable occurs to him: _maybe Vergil simply did not want to be found.

_And still, he hasn't still learned his lesson not to fling himself into the wishing well and expect not to drown into the bottomless depths_.)

He's been allowed to clean most of the blood as well. Dante prefers to think it's Vergil giving him the permission to scrub the mess away and not just resigning himself to the whims of Dante's will, feeble and powerless. They haven't really been exchanging any words after the heart-to-heart they had earlier, a million years ago, so being sure about it is something he can pretty much only dream of. The list of things unsaid between them is long enough to form a rocky mountain and attempting to cross it is too daunting when his brother mostly likely can't even effectively resist his fussiness if it bothers him. As it is, he merely averts his half-lidded eyes when Dante dabs his face with a wettened piece of fabric, careful not to use any more moisture or force than necessary; this time, he doesn't recoil, and Dante still doesn't feel any better than he did when Vergil did draw back. Seeing that he hasn't died of poisoning or experienced any other exciting side effects from his brief swimming trip, he forces himself to be confident enough about the safety of the hell water for this purpose. Using his own spit to polish Vergil's face doesn't come across as the best of plans, so he soaks the rag between the swipes in the puddle, blue and red blood turning into a cheery purple. At some point Vergil pinches his eyes tightly shut and he considers leaving the stains be, but there's no other way for him to be, or at least feel, useful in any capacity. He rubs the dirt away gently, all efficient, impersonal circular motions. He can detect his yearning anyway if he wants to, no need to rub that in his face even when he'd like to linger, to commit his features to memory. If he lets himself spend more time on tidying up his hands, which admittedly do have a thicker coating of Dante on them, well, perhaps it feels less like intruding and forcing himself upon a defenseless sibling. Vergil doesn't react when he crawls back next to him. Dante acts it's him not minding it. It must be fine, just like everything else is fine.

If he had a knife to his neck and, for some reason not shameless enough to ask the person holding it there to get on with it and kill him, was threatened to find something, anything positive about the current state of his life, there's this: Vergil has neither had any episodes that lead him to attack everything in sight nor any nightmares, the latter probably because he can't fall asleep due to the spasming, even when he looks like he doesn't have the strength to stay awake. Dante's pretty sure the former is because he simply can't throw a fit like that, anymore. Whatever energy he has he must use to prevent himself from literally falling apart in front of Dante's eyes.

(Maybe another blessing could be the fact that he hasn't been sporting an inopportune erection while cuddling his fading brother closer. It's not even the smell or the unsettling, alien frailty of him that puts his libido off; no, it is, in fact, disturbingly tricky to figure out a state for him to be in, in which looking at Vergil or being physically in such a close proximity would not make him hard. This is one of those exceedingly rare situations. He thinks it's the grief preventing him from getting it up, and he's quietly thankful for feeling like shit, because it spares Vergil the pain of having to bodily witness how much of a pitiful monster his sibling is when stripped from all his guises. He's Vergil, he must know, must be able to read him even when he's trying to bury the feelings under lock and key and twenty years of pretending to be a more or less whole person and not just a bundle of memories, a wraith haunting himself aimlessly. It's there, but it's not reminding him of it every second by jutting against his hip. Fuck, why does he have to be like this?)

If Vergil fell asleep now, it's more than likely he would not be waking up. Would it be for the best, now, the best way for him to go? He's cried his eyes and tear ducts bone dry, yet they still smart, the pain pulsating dully. Hell takes of care of Dante's need for shuteye with its regenerative hocus-pocus or whatever it is that keeps him technically functional (Vergil'd know but he can't tell) but it's still doing nothing for the exhaustion which has spread to his marrow and swirls around there lazily. He's so afraid he'll crush him, suffocate him to death with his body that feels like it's shutting down as well, a lump of leaden dead weight, difficult to control. Difficult to keep his touches light enough when there's nothing, nothing light in the universe except Vergil, who is not heavy enough.

Does Vergil want him to offer to end it? The Vergil he conjured up in his mind and believed to be his actual brother would never want his pity, so it does seem unlikely, but the prospect doesn't leave him in peace once it has entered his mind. It's even more unpleasant to wonder whether he'd be capable of doing it, if Vergil so wished. Could he do it if he asked, or at least if he no less than begged him to put him out of his misery? Dante is full of hot air about being there for him in his hour of need, but if push came to shove, could he help him?

(“_No,” whispers the voice, “you've never really cared about anyone else's needs but your own. He could fall to his knees in front of you and plead his heart out, and yet you'd still make the selfish choice. __Γ__νῶθι σεαυτόν, Dante, know your greed_.”)

He tucks Vergil a bit closer and wonders why he can never manage to protect and love him in any meaningful way even when he keeps claiming to himself he wants to do both.

Suddenly, there's a particularly strong convulsion ripping through him, a bolt of dry lightning. There's an ugly sound, like Vergil is throwing up in his mouth without anything actually coming up. He shakes Dante off him, the gestures uncontrolled and weak but effective, staggering to his feet, or at least attempting to. They shake so thoroughly that it doesn't work at all; he collapses to his knees before he can shift his meagre weight to them. For a second there it looks like he's falling from them face first into the sand and the hilarity of witnessing Vergil faceplant into something is only snuffed out by the fact that it's fucking horrifying, that it makes Dante feel like something has cut the bottom of his stomach open and let the hydrochloric acid out to corrode his flesh. Dante's spent his entire life either looking at his brother's unnatural poise and the finesse of his movements − the fluid impression the same when positioning his still growing limbs languidly on the bed with one of his fragile, old poetry books and balancing the katana to a deceptively relaxed but battle-ready position, quick as a levin to strike− or dreaming about his gracefulness, first in adolescent, brotherly jealousy and platonic longing and then in yearning that probably could power several middle-sized planets for decades if harvested. Seeing his face chipping away is jarring, but what really drives it home that he's dying, not counting him saying the exact thing, is having to notice that his mastery of his own body is so nonexistent. Instead of flopping flat into the endless field of grit, Vergil shakes and his body jerks forward. His body folds into two, bends double, his hair a fan of flat silver light over him, covering his head. The line of his shoulders that the fabric has revealed trembles compulsively.

He still carries on his gargling that is only interrupted by sharp, pained intakes of breath, which do not seem to do him any good. Dante is torn between rushing next to him and having a closer look and staying back, because he hasn't got any clue what is happening, merely that it's bad, being the fucking genius he is. He can't deal with inflicting any extra pain on him, but knowing if that'll happen by trying to help him or leaving him be requires the kind of information that Vergil seems hell-bent on taking to the grave with him (he's not thinking about his tomb, he's not going to think about burying him yet, he's not, _he's not_, he can't).

Vergil lets out the briefest of sounds, high-pitched. It could be categorized as a scream in some universe, probably, but not in the ones Dante's familiar with. He's seen some creepy things − alone on this mission, he's witnessed everything from demonic infested tanks to a giant larva-laying moth and goddamn Sargassos hanging from a mobile that tried its best to electrocute him −, but this is spinning out of control so rapidly he can't keep up even with his considerable experience of observing things go sideways in a spectacular fashion.

”Ni te plus oculis meis amarem,” Vergil somehow succeeds in spitting out between the intakes and tremors, bitter as quinine, and even though Dante has no idea what he has just said, he can't focus and think the words through even if he might know them − it's something terribly profound and yet witty, no doubt, fucking Vergil wasting his last breath to pay homage to some guy who's been dead for thousands of years instead of, you know, wasting it to say goodbye to the person going to pieces because of it, and no, Dante is not envious of one dusty poet or other −, he does notice the slight edge of disbelieving hysterics clinging to them. Another display of his lack of control; it makes him panic in turn and turns his state of high alertness into overdrive. The urge to do something boils in his arteries, but a nauseating, helpless premonition forestalls him. Vergil makes a small, pained sound at the back of his throat, a dry, unhealthy burble, then he stills and starts to pant, at first almost unnoticeably and soon to the degree that Dante should be seeing him break into cold sweat of pain.

When he lifts his head from the crouch, more likely because he needs to breathe deeper than he can from the bent position than getting back to his feet having pulled through the spell, Dante feels the ground disappear beneath his feet.

Black ichor streaks his face in two thick, vertical stripes and smaller splotches on his upper cheeks and lower forehead. The alien substance is viscous, sticking to the cracks on his skin, and it keeps coming, coming from where his eyes used to be. They have burst, the eruption must have caused significant pressure on them from the inside where the substance came from and the fragile tissue couldn't handle it anymore under the strain and how long has this been going on, did he feel it, did he know what was happening the whole time and _just waited_ \--

Vergil doesn't have eyes anymore.

The solid, stiff liquid, it doesn't smell strongly of anything, only a hint of something gasoline-like and sour. There's no blood, though, and none of the pulp Dante would expect to see gushing out from a ruptured eyeball --

This is where Dante vomits. Hello, spew, his old friend. How there can be something to purge when he has last eaten back in his office, if his memory serves correctly, could be explained by his insides being likewise replaced with sick.

His own legs are shaky and he's feeling feverish, after, like having caught malaria, but he stumbles to him anyway, has to. Could Vergil even get to where Dante would be standing or maybe at that point lying on the ground, limp with the shock, because he's not able to see his location and Dante thinks he's mute, can't signal his whereabouts, because his tongue is hot and glued to the bottom of his mouth and against the wall of this throat and he's almost choking on the weight of it.

Vergil either tries to aim his not-gaze at his approaching steps or then he merely spasms in a way which imitates that. Someone else might have claimed he was at his most accurate with Yamato and perhaps also the spectral swords he wielded and cast with deadly ease, but Dante knew better, knew he could dissect his target and its weak spots even more sharply and precisely with his eyes. Everything Dante has ever seen reflected in them − the poorly concealed laughter at his childhood antics dancing in them, the tenacious will, the cutting flash of hatred, the recent emptiness of death − has oozed out mutated and tainted, never to be seen again.

What is left of him anymore? All his accomplishments, his attributes, eroded and carried away nebulously.

He holds Vergil's narrow face between his palms, only paying distant attention to the steadily thickening layer of dust coloring them sickly white. Up close, the damage is more apparent. It screams its presence with the ruin and gore. Whatever was left of his eyeballs and their inner structure before the blow-up is now most likely mixed into the bleed, which has finally stopped dripping out from the now useless orifices. His hands try to refuse his command to stop shaking so fucking badly, but he eventually gets them stable enough. It's not like there's a chance of poking an eye out anymore by accident, he thinks, tasting his hysteria in the lingering aroma of puke. He slides a thumb upwards next to the trail of tar, movements watchful and slow, he lets Vergil become aware of what he's doing. Vergil's pale mouth opens and closes minutely, repeatedly, but otherwise he just hangs there, and it feels like Dante's cupped hands around his head are the only thing holding him up. When he gets to the peak of the cheekbone, the surroundings of his former right eye, he circles his touch around the impact area and avoids the broad gashes dwelling under the socket and on it. Vergil's long, delicate lashes are a clump of congealed black fluid. It adheres to Dante's skin when he cracks the lid open while withholding his breathing, focused on his tentative ministrations. He is greeted by more blackness; the surface of the gunk has set somewhat, some of it bleeding to Vergil's cheek when the eyelid is unfurled, but there's nothing else to see, no shreds of the optical nerve, no blood vessels, no vitreous humor, no nothing. He holds the remains of the eye longer than he perhaps should, shaken to the cores of his bones by the fact that he'll never see it whole again. He never, never thought there could be something crueler than the unfeeling red shining through them when Mundus had stolen them for his pet champion, but, well. Congratulations to the party that arranges these things, he has been proven wrong once again. Vergil whinnies in discomfort and Dante lets the lid slip close with a wet squish. It makes a concave cover over the defunct organ.

“This is only going to get worse,” a recollection of Vergil's earlier warning whispers slyly. And he understands with a horrifying clarity, now: his skin is cracking from the push and stress from inside, it's barely holding the black matter and what is left of _him _in. He must be more bile than flesh, at this point.

His mouth, his lovely mouth, has started to spall, too. He forgets how weird and unwanted it is to examine it so intently; he stares, his own mouth a desert, his own tongue ready to fragment from the sudden drought as well. Vergil's lower lip quivers. Dante forgets himself and traces its vermilion border with his fingertip. Feels nothing like he imagined, it's so dry, nothing like your regular chapped or weather-beaten skin. Kissing it must be alike to making out with a piece of sandpaper, only a million times more heartbreaking.

Dante will never know. He won't do it, won't violate Vergil and his trust like that.

(He is aware that it will become a regret. He can't think of the after now. Vergil has never needed him enough that he could not do without, not even when Dante's needed him to need him, but if Vergil allows him to be here, he has to be able to hold himself together, even falling apart at the seams. There will be an after, and if there's nothing remaining of him by then, he's only glad.)

He's hit by a masochistic urge to see the full extent of the damage. Vergil doesn't lift his head to follow his movements when he scrapes his bones into a pile that resembles a human standing up. He might not feel him moving, the warmth and pressure around him dissipating when he's left on the sand alone. It's a testament to his condition that he doesn't put up a fight when Dante, fervent with his sweltering fear, begins to undress him. For the first time in his adult life, there is nothing even remotely sexual about it, thinking of his brother's naked body and now even interacting with it more closely than he's had the permission to before. He only tugs the soiled cloth off until he has bared the whole of his upper body, leaving the fabric billow over Vergil's lap.

It's bad, of course it is bad. The cracks run wider on his withered torso, some of them as thick as his bony wrists. The ichor is awfully visible under them, not quite breaking through but so close to the surface that it's easy to believe it would stain his fingers, should he run them in the ravines. Vergil shivers and shivers, looking like all his bones should be sticking out of his upper half and back like the keratin spikes of a hedgehog, but since he doesn't have any, they don't. This must be what they mean by the term uncanny valley; something that should be fine, proportionate and beautiful is eerie and distorted. Familiar enough to be recognized for what it is, but if the extreme thinness wasn't enough to freak him out − Vergil from his memories is lean and slender, not an emaciated skeleton, and technically he isn't that even now, he's got no skeleton within him −, the grotesque flatness of his body surely would.

Vergil shivers and shivers until he doesn't. When he stops, the motionlessness is so accentuated that Dante recognizes this is it. The end is nigh.

Why doesn't this get any easier the fourth time around, why does it only get worse? He realizes Vergil's demon side and the energies in this place must mean his suffering will be drawn out.

He wants to cry.

Dante should face death with dignity but he has none left. All his desperation erupts into a last plea. Maybe it amuses him, if he is sufficiently cognizant to understand his rambling, that he's showing once and for all that his accusations of them both being indifferent to human woes are true. Sure, sure, it is a coping method for him to try and save them, he needs the reason to be able to handle existing even to some extent, he doesn't truly care, sure, he knows. “So we can't fix the tree, I get it, but there's got to be something that can at least halt this so that we have time to find something that works! Please, I'll do anything, open another Temen-ni-gru or whatever, just let me --"

“Yamato,“ Vergil suddenly cries out. ”With her, I could separate --” Another fit, even more vehement than the ones before. Among his spit, there's a hint of black. Why he only tells him this _now_, they clearly don't have the luxury to talk through.

“We'll find her, I promise. But − fuck − but how are we going to get you there, get you to survive long enough?”

Vergil makes a small hiccup. It would be cute, if he wasn't dying any moment now.

“I won't. The healing's the last thing keeping me alive.”

Then something unprecedented occurs; Dante actually thinks he gets something. He really does think that he, maybe, understands the last-ditch dying plan Vergil is concocting. It's possible it's just Dante's feverish despair speaking and latching on to something that's not there; the audiovisual evidence for its existence is scant, but he takes the proffered lifeline as if it has been painted with a bright neon warning color anyway.

“Vergil. You said earlier that I chopped some of the corruption off with Rebellion.”

Vergil hums, or at least attempts to. The results are poor, but Dante wants to believe he understands what his twin is trying to accomplish.

“If I took you to Yamato, could you fix things?”

A somewhat affirming sound followed by more gargles. Sufficient.

“But how do we get there fast enough? I mean, I haven't got the faintest of where that is, but I don't think getting out of here by foot is going to happen.”

Vergil lolls his head to the vague direction of the accursed bike, still hanging out in the background. The motion repeats itself a couple of times, like his muscles or whatever it is that moves his extremities around at this stage are finally giving up and his body is going limp against his will before the approaching rigor mortis sets in. Even when it stops, he can't quite lift his head upright, so it stays a little tilted like it's ready to fall to any direction flaccidly.

It's really, really hard to focus. But --

The chopper? This time it's exactly where Dante dumped it, no foul play perceptible. He hasn't been paying it next to any attention at all, seeing that he was groveling on the ground with his back turned to it the whole time, but if it has travelled somewhere during his downtime, it doesn't tell so.

“The bike? Doesn't really sound like anything from the legends, either, but if you say so, then we'll ride off into the sunset with a motorcycle, of all things.”

“Dante.” He says it as if this is obvious, the effect only ruined by his dying rattle to some extent. If he had the energy to, if he had the eyes to, he would surely roll his eyes around. The exasperation is so normal and familiar that Dante could, for a second, kiss his empty sockets. “It is a devil arm.”

“What.”

The look Vergil throws at him communicates what his words can't (even though it's more like he's orienting his head at his direction, because he is blind, his eyes are gone, Vergil is _blind)_. He doesn't say anything out loud, but their twins' instincts are starting to kick in, too little, too _late_: “Dante, you mean to tell me you have had it all this time and did not notice?”

What.

What? The motorcycle he stumbled upon in some deserted storage hut, a demon arm? How has he noticed nothing?

Does that explain the weird “appearing to places where it hasn't been transported to” thing it has been doing somehow and he's just missing the obvious explanation? The fact that he hasn't had to abandon it because of running out of fuel, seeing that there are no gas stations around here, too? How hasn't he noticed any of this?

Well, no time to waste on expecting anything to make sense. He turns around, frantically searching for his birthright. The sword is lying flat next to the spring. He still doesn't remember placing it there and can't make up any motives for doing so. Whatever, time's a wasting. He runs to the edge of the water and hoists the weapon up, gnashing his teeth at the sensation of the arm's heavy mass on his hand, the heavy mass of responsibility and regret that it casts on his shoulders. Nature has a cruel way of turning the most natural of things into something unnatural.

Returning to his brother, Dante tries to silence the doubts which try to suffocate him. The unsaid words sticking to the insides of his windpipe are doing a better job at it. Vergil is ready to keel over, the last vestiges of tension he can muster being the only thing to keep him on his knees. He tries to convince himself it's good that he's kneeling; that way, maybe it will be nothing like with the Angelo, proudly fighting to the bitter end. (Not that he isn't fighting now, his throat working to keep the humor down. No Adam's apple even with him being so skinny.)

“How should I do it, then?”

“The mouth has always been regarded as one of the most powerful of the foci,” Vergil croaks. He looks like he wants to elaborate further, but then he makes a thick noise that sound suspiciously much like his gullet has been filled up and he just stares at Dante with a desperate intensity, gurgling sickeningly. The only thing he manages to get out is his name, distinguishable even when it's more recognizable as a faint, pained moan and not an intentional combination of syllables. The corner of his right eye starts bleeding dark discharge, the leak staining his cheek like a charcoal tear.

So it's up to Dante, now. Fuck. He has no idea if he got this right at all, but Vergil's really, actually, factually, truly, utterly, irrevocably dead in a minute if he does nothing.

Separating the rot from him won't save him because the rot is a part of him now, but if it really buys them time to get to Yamato and for Vergil to do… whatever, then it is worth a shot to try.

He just hopes it's not Vergil committing suicide by gullible, despairing brother.

Dante needs a sign, here. From the depths of his coat he manages to fish out a coin with his tremulous hands, the last one he has on him. It shines when the light hits it above his head, a high arch that gets drawn out too quickly. Heads, needless to say, it's heads.

“Well then,” he says curtly, lifting Rebellion above Vergil's body and aiming carefully. “Here goes nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vergil is citing Catullus 14: “If I didn't love you more than my eyes, --“. It's a thing in his poems. Other appearances of loving something more than one's eyes: poems 3, 82, 104.
> 
> Next chapter: it, surprisingly, might get better (and also worse).


	9. ix. Eyes with Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was supposed to be under 5000 words. I've given up trying to predict the final word count of this thing now. 
> 
> Also; new kudos − thanks to you guys too!

While Dante has impaled Vergil with his sword in plenty of ways, this is something new. It's … not necessarily a good thing.

Rebellion is, of course, a fucking massive piece of tempered and quenched and cursed steel. An absolute behemoth among his arms − although it's less impressive when he has so few of them these days since he has sold them to be able to drink and to forget, but, well, there was a point there somewhere and now he's just missing it because his thoughts are scrambling and scattering like the countless black roaches that he found eating his spew under his beaten-up writing desk in _Devil Never Cry _and that made him question his grasp on reality, which probably was partly a reason why he ended up immolating the place, because he thought he could make the maybe-delusions go away by drinking more, which lead him to rummaging through his closets in a desperate quest for more alcohol and finding the damn glove; and all this scurries through his mind in the space between two breaths, a coward's attempt to escape what has to be done. Exhale.

Inhale. The sword heavy and willing above him, thirsty for blood. A familiar strain.

Anyway.

It's not just the remarkable length of the thing, a head short of his own, but the width of the double-edged blade that's suddenly so unnerving. It's not as bad the Vendetta he's still hauling along with him since that non-arm is at least as broad as Vergil is thin, making it kind of an impractical vanilla weapon for a human to wield; that's a limited consolation at best, though. However big Vergil's mouth might have seemed occasionally, having heard him speak in his usual arrogant manner or having just seen it stretch across his face into a slanted, condescending smirk, it does him no good when the breadth of the family heirloom must go through it. Dante takes a moment to estimate how close of a fit it will be; the results are inconclusive mostly due to the fact that he can barely hold himself together and on his feet, so any higher functions are out of commission. The coin said it's fine -- and then Vergil's head lolls back all of a sudden, forcing Dante to grip his hair with a panic-sweaty hand and hold him upright. (_Stop prevaricating_.)

It either will fit or it won't.

The blade cuts the corners of his mouth open when he drives it in with confidence and bravado he doesn't have, giving him a horizontal, level Glasgow smile. It doesn't split his entire head into two, but it's a close thing. It makes him sick, but he pushes it forward, deeper into him, even when the gurgles and the wet sounds keep getting more and more upsetting and frantic. He's not sure if he's cutting into his tongue or if it's something else dwelling down there; he meets some resistance when the tip is past his oral cavity. He puts his elbows into it, shoves it past the jam and tastes salt. The blade must cleave the sides of his esophagus open too, barely fitting inside his throat at all. Doesn't run into bone, though, so easy going. Dante is shaking like a leaf and has to resort to working his own gag reflex constantly, a stab of hot terror piercing his diaphragm. After forcing Rebellion, himself, inside his chest, his frantically steady grip slips, the thrust going wide; he ends up ramming the arm into his thigh once it is past his stomach, until the tip of it touches the ground, sheathes itself into the sand.

This is where he starts to panic fully. Alright, Vergil is skewered alright, but wasn't something supposed to happen, here? More importantly, is Dante supposed to do something to activate the shotgun divorce between Vergil and Mundus' corruption? Instructions were unclear, situation beyond fucked up. Fuck, he needs something -- he wishes he could read his eyes, even if the only thing he could accurately see in them and be able to read with any reliable certainly was his own reflection. He doesn't know what it'll do to him, what he'll do to himself, if he's too late because he got tangled up in his selfish desire of not having to hurt him and himself by proxy.

If this is some form of drunken stupor and the shakes, now would be an excellent time to sober up or even merely change hallucinations, because this is something straight out of his nastier nightmares. Vergil looks like his eyes would have turned towards the back of his skull, if he still had them. The pained rictus his face has stilled into, combined with the black liquid pooling around his collapsing mouth and seeping into the cracks, makes it hard to look at. If it wasn't for the minute, fading twitches and the gargling, choking sounds slipping out past the blade, he could well be dead. He's nearly stiff enough with the tension of pain stretching his body and pinning it tightly on the sword. He can't see anything that might be happening under the bundle of now gaudily colorful fabric which still covers his lower body (he only knows Rebellion has gone through his knee because he hears the sand screech when he twists it slightly further, the noise grating on his teeth). The steel is thick enough that he can see it glow through in some parts that it pierces on his bare upper body.

He looks like he's dead. Like he has just killed him again. Wouldn't it be fitting, him having had Dante's name as the last word on his lips, his fever-delirious mind croons. The black stains his hands and it could be the single most fucked up thing about this colossal wreck; that it feels so wrong there's not a drop of his blood on them. There's nothing red on his face except the sleeves of Dante's battered jacket hanging as a partial curtain above it − he discarded his black gloves at some point, no exact recollection of the time and place −, which are turning inky from the heavy discharge seeping into the weave, anyway. Nothing to remind him of the red glow of its previous form, not directly. Nevertheless, something about this whole experience takes him back to killing the Angelo anyway. His own blood making his hands slippery and unsure; it almost had him when he got too distracted by the halo of uncomfortably familiar astral swords aimed at his midriff to dodge in time. The creature's face suddenly becoming intimate, dear and haunting, with the small and bitterly amused grimace, like he was suddenly there to laugh at Dante beyond the grave (_Look on your Works, ye Mighty, and despair_). He thinks about it, how there wasn't and isn't the blood he needs for his make-believe closure, how he couldn't and can't feel bones breaking under his crushing caress, the only way he knows how to touch him without giving himself away, how death is the only way he can ever reach him, forever departing; he pushes the sword deeper into the sand, into Vergil, until Vergil swallows the ribs of the guard of the pommel with a stifled gurgle.

The same smile on Vergil's face when he threw himself backwards into the abyss. The same smile when he told him there was nothing left to do.

His face is empty now. Dante feels his hold on the grip tremble and something inside himself quieten.

_\-- precor − and I beg_

_et serves animae dimidium meae − save half my soul_

There is a blinding flash of light, rich blue instead of the purple he could've expected. Dante instinctively pulls himself back, pulls Rebellion loose with one violent tug and a large arch of the ichor spraying out of the breached body. He doesn't realize he has triggered into his other form until he senses his wings flutter around him like a protecting cover, his eyes still stinging from the bright assault even several feet away from the source. The blue throbs on his eyes and inside them like an angry wound and he thinks deliriously that he's become blind, too, until he starts to perceive white spots pulsing in the middle of the ocean of blueness that starts to give way to black and then black and white, his surroundings.

He sees Vergil, paler than the sand but bathed in red, black and blue, on the other side of the clearing still wobbling on his knees. For a moment Dante thinks he's fainting or falling to the ground, dead as a stone, but it turns out it's just him bending double and down again. A series of close-knit quivers perfuses him and he croaks, pained, before spitting on the ground. He throws up a big gulp of black plasma next, now in disgusting, fist-sized coagulations that wobble and shine in the artificial lightning streaming down form the firmament. It turns into a violent surge, seemingly unending, a pool expanding in front of him and beneath him like a malevolent shadow. There are more chunks among the flood which look like they've been torn from a bigger formation, like he's vomiting pieces of his shredded internal organs which he doesn't even have anymore, neither hacked nor whole. The tint of napalm and petrol is hanging in the air stronger than it was earlier, even when Dante's fingers got covered in it. It's a smell of decay, just not the kind he's used to.

It goes on for a long while, much longer than it should, because there's no way this amount of the matter would ever have fitted inside his diminished body. The last dredges of the stuff come out in a tired little dribble. Vergil hangs his mouth open for some time after it has ended as if waiting for another outburst, completing the imitation of a fish he's been working on lately. It's funny in a completely non-amusing way, with him stranded in the middle of the sea of noxious fluid. He eventually closes his maw and rubs his palm over it, thoughtful. His eyes would probably look unfocused, but seeing that his eye sockets are still as empty of actual eyeballs as they were prior to the stabbing, it's only an impression he gets and discards.

So it's not a miracle cure. Dante won't admit to believing otherwise for a fleeting moment, since in hindsight he can't find a point in this Passion play of Vergil suffering and dying and coming back to suffer and die when it would have appeared even remotely possible. If it has pulled him some steps backwards from death's door as it seems like, though, it has to be enough. His mouth is still not really intact, but at least the restorative powers around here appear to have healed the wounds he received from the spearing: the corners are as white as the rest of his face, although there are no signs of fragmentation on the mended skin or the imitation thereof. Everywhere else the cracks forcibly stamped on his skin remain, but nothing is currently oozing out of them. Not exactly uplifting, but things could be worse, which is a novelty as of itself. Vergil raises his dead stare at him; the gesture is accurate, but it leaves Dante wondering how much of it is guesswork and how much some sort of demonic witchcraft, because his twin seems to be the tiniest bit thrown aback at the fact that he can't look him in the eye. Judging by how his forehead creases, he probably attempts blinking next; doesn't work, his lids are glued shut and possibly otherwise damaged too. It will take some getting used to.

Vergil picks himself up; the slight tremble of his limbs almost fades out when he he's standing. It's nowhere near what he used to be like, but it is an improvement to his recent immobility (damn it, he'll do this positivity thing even if and when it kills him eventually). Noting that he's extremely underdressed for his standards, he gropes the lump of cloth hanging on his lower body until he can make some sense of how it's folded and tugs the hems into a makeshift cloak. Dante, de-demonified at some point, bites his tongue to quell the itch to offer him a hand and a pair of eyes. The desire goes nowhere, but at least he manages to avoid blurting anything discriminating out. Apparently satisfied with his handiwork for the moment, Vergil quits tampering with the fabric. There's nothing they could do to salvage it from the splatters and blots short of burning it, anyway.

“Yamato,” Vergil says soberly, voice raw but audible. Dante doesn't want to dwell on what he maybe wished he would say as his first post-a-near-death-experience thing, because it is great that he's straight to the point and clear-headed enough to prioritize like that. It's good, it's great, his heart and dick can shut up for a moment.

“Yeah. Do you know where she is?”

“Yes.” Since he doesn't offer any additional crumbs of knowledge, Dante won't prod him for more, not now; otherwise their only accomplishment will be making sure he'll really die, because the push and pull business only works when he's not the only one competing in the tug of war − Vergil must willing or inconvenienced enough to share with the audience, no matter how much he harps on.

Or, well, there is this one thing that's kind of crucial immediately. “Is she here, in Hell, or on the upper floor?”

“Humans have her,” Vergil says voice full of distaste. Loathing for her hanging out with someone else or being in the hands of humans in particular, Dante can't tell. It's tiring to have to analyze every gesture and tone and then have second thoughts about his interpretation; during their childhood he didn't really require reading and definitely not this kind of close reading he's missing all the theories and annotations for − once upon a time, he could in many cases just scan his twin idly and get the desired information. Though now he can also begin to doubt the accuracy of his intuition back then too, how handy. Vergil could've let him believe whatever he wanted and he was entirely too stupid and blinded by his affection to notice. Dante just loves how the corruption has spread to every aspect of his life and corroded even the things he thought he could unquestionably rely on, always − there's very little he can take as a fact anymore, past, future or present. Maybe it's leprosy he's got, maybe that's why Dante ends up soiling and turning everything he touches into something rotten and lifeless without fail. Like a Midas, but in reverse.

(_Maybe Mundus has always had him and Dante has been blissfully unaware of it. Maybe everything he saw in him, everything he thought they had, was but fool's gold that glittered prettily in the light of his smile.)_

Vergil turns around a couple of times and inclines his head as if he's looking at the ground. He drags his right foot in a larger arch around him and makes an uneven circle in the sand, but nothing happens, not that Dante can see. It looks nothing like his usual spell work; the glyph looks strangely rudimentary when compared with any other runes he's seen him craft. He's done it in the middle of a chaotic fight a million times; he shouldn't need his sight to construct one, not with how confident and familiar he's been with his tricks. His brother breathes out and bends down until he reaches the frayed edges of the clout that hang just above his ankles. There's a sound of fabric ripping; he tears a napkin-sized strip away. Next, he turns again and makes his way to the edge of the spring, surprisingly steadily, stopping on the very line where sand turns into water. Seeing him crouch down makes Dante finally get what's going on.

“Want some help with that?” Turns out he's not trying to hex anything, he just can't locate the rag Dante used earlier by looking around. The lump lies left to the ring he drew, outside of his recently reduced reach.

Vergil acts as if he hasn't heard a thing, drenching the piece of cotton in the well. He works quickly and focuses on the streaks running down his mouth and eyes, which he gets mostly clean. His eyelids and lashes are still caked with thick clots of the stuff and there are likewise stains on his upper face. Dante decides to play with the fire nevertheless − it's akin to sticking his palm on a lit stove in hopes of not getting burned − and walks to him with pointedly heavy and loud steps, raising lazy clouds of dust to float in the air. Vergil knows he's next to him but makes no signs to indicate he acknowledges the fact; he merely keeps wringing the inky rag in the spring since he must feel it's dirty by the stickiness of the mess, even when he's missing large chunks of his fingertips. Dante leans closer and tries to project his movements more clearly by humming deep in his chest. Getting no reaction out of him, he plucks the wipe from Vergil's hands, which nets him an annoyed head tilt but not much else. Since Vergil isn't moving his probably even more nonexistent than ever ass or looking very open to the option of angling his head up for him, Dante steps into the pond and slogs through the water to stand across him. Losing one of his most lively features makes his blank face even more of a tabula rasa. Unnerving as fuck; also painful, but that kind of goes without saying. Not one to be intimidated by threats to his personal safety, he lowers himself to the same level and swabs Vergil's face experimentally. He must be displeased, his heckles are up, and yet he doesn't protest when Dante begins to erase the stubborn marks on his temple. Very statue-like; only his small inhales and exhales break the icy surface of his shattered visage. Doesn't sound like the workings of healthy, functional lungs, but it's not a blatant swan song either.

When he has breathed for a moment himself and gathered his courage to approach the eyelids, Vergil swats his hand away. “We are done here.”

He stands up straight and faces Dante by looming above him with an agonizingly neutral expression. He hasn't obviously had the chance to measure him, but something tells him his big brother is taller than him now, by an inch or so. He's not casting the twisted, ceiling-high shadow the Angelo lumbered around with, but the observation is unpleasant all the same.

(_He should've weeded out the obsession in the bud when he still might've had the possibility; kid brains must be more malleable and open to relentless manipulation than whatever it is that's ghosting in his head these days. “Identical twins” became a challenge to him − rationally he knew this, but Vergil was different, so he had to look different. He can't explain it away by claiming it was some innate self-hate making him cherish in his brother what he found revolting in himself; no, he actually liked himself back then, as implausible as it now seems. The mouth was inevitably the center of his attention and infatuation, but in the throes of his mania he could focus for ages on things like his bony knuckles, their shared lack of birthmarks or his sharp canines until his eyes would get splayed. It got out of hand in their teens when they appeared to have begun to wear their weight differently: Dante could try to jerk off to Vergil's long, long legs and narrow waist deliriously but become suddenly aware of how thick and coarse his own fingers felt curling around his cock, nothing like his brother's dainty yet strong digits that tapped an occult rhythm against the cord-wrapped handle of his katana, and feel the building climax wither in his hands. He was in too deep already; there's no getting up from the swamp ten years later_.)

He shakes his head, noticing how dirty his mop is getting. At least there's no one else to see it. Fuck. He's perfectly aware he's not much to look at and that he hasn't been presentable for years, but for a while there he tortured himself absent-mindedly with the thought that Vergil could miss seeing _him_. No doubt that he does in the way that he'd like to be able to monitor anything and everything as per usual, even keep an intact eye on him out of a paranoid precaution, but to think that he could be grieving for the sight of Dante in particular is a notably nice way to both feed the fire of his self-deceit and mourn another thing that has been taken away from his brother. Not a whole lot left there at this stage. “So. How are we getting out of this place?”

Vergil hums. “There are certain shortcuts I have preferred to take in the past. Unfortunately, they are not currently available.” Dante takes this as him admitting he usually just cuts the fabric of time and space into shreds with Yamato and forces himself through the cracks. He has no idea where she is, but Vergil seems to know what to do − must be the telepathic connection they have guiding him. It, too, must be good enough. Time to get the hell out of dodge and Hell, in some less than convenient way.

He gets up and jogs to fetch Rebellion that has ended up farther away from them than he had imagined. It's stained and gooey with the mystery substance and has bone-colored sand clinging to every dirtied inch, but that won't affect its performance in combat. Might even help him by blinding the enemies they undoubtedly have to pass with a small-scale sandstorm. The thought is far less funny under the current circumstances. Shit, is there such a thing as not too soon for clusterfucks of these proportions?

“The bike it is, then,” he remarks, just to have something to say when he walks over to the vehicle in question. He's nearly disappointed to note it's still there, as if it hadn't been leading a life of its own earlier. It's mocking him now.

Vergil seems to eye the thing distrustfully when Dante hauls himself on the seat. It's almost comforting that the loss hasn't fully dulled his glare. ”It certainly is a devil arm, but that's not there is all there is to it.” He sighs, seemingly annoyed with the gaps in his knowledge. “Regardless, it seems to be all we currently have.”

The things is, even when he knows it's not your regular mortal's regular bike, he still doesn't sense it at all. Dante has dabbled with more devil arms than he has had meaningful relations with people, and with this thing, there's nothing, zilch, nada. He knows it somehow has the power to disappear and appear at will or whatever and that it doesn't need fuel to run, but why can't he glean this info from the bike itself? He always knows instinctively what to do with a new arm, how to use it to the best of its abilities once he picks it up − when he gives it a spin, it's already like he's been wielding it as his main piece for decades even if they don't resonate with him like the katana clearly does with Vergil. With the motorcycle, he can't even tell what good it would do in a fight. It's an arm, it's got to have something up in its sleeve. Could he only try and run over some poor demons with it, something lame like that? Could he throw it at them and have it return like a particularly vicious and sleek boomerang? Will it break into two and form spiffy swords for him to dual wield? He hasn't the faintest. If he ignores that, then he has to confront another disturbing anomaly: he's supposed to sense the lingering fragment of a soul trapped in the physical form, should have gotten a glimpse of that when they spent a lot of quality time together getting here. It wouldn't surprise him anymore if it were dead − can demon arms be zombies as well? Only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, an empty shell.

It's extremely frustrating to come across something you're supposed to know by heart and realize your heart has been leading you on all along, feeding you false information.

Talking of arms: he keeps Rebellion attached to his back because it might improve his reaction time by some seconds if he has it within quick reach. Their affair, his and Rebellion's, has never been the active symbiosis Yamato seemed to have with her razor-sharp companion, but he's not used to it being as strained as it is currently. Not that easy to have an easy-going relationship something that Sparda has spawned in general, to be honest. Now it feels like someone has jury rigged the arm to hang on the ceiling, and there it dangles, above him like in some myth he remembers snatches of, silent and shrewd − the shiny happy memories of violating Vergil with it a moment ago surely add a nice touch. The sword of Damocles, that's what it was called. Fucking bullshit, all of it, his own good-for-nothing anxiety more than anything. It's stupid to blame an arm for his own decisions to use it against the one thing he's ever wanted to stay intact.

Vergil climbs after him gingerly. Dante is not sure if he's just not used to being able to move his limbs out of his own will yet or if he's been left to such a weakened state permanently, but in any case, he does not mount the back of the bike as fluidly as he had hoped he would. To be fair, the only garment he's wearing doesn't allow for much agility. Due to the coverage he doesn't exactly see how his brother swings his skinny leg over the bike, although it seems to be unexpectedly slow and careful. Vergil huffs soundlessly and shifts his weight around until he's seated stably for the most part. He sits quietly for a moment, legs astride, until he starts messing with the fabric again. Dante turns his head towards the endless sea of birches when he catches a sight of a bare shoulder. Doesn't seem right, seeing his naked body like this. Apparently some dexterity has returned to his twin's hands, because when the movements quiet down and Dante dares to check up on him again, he's managed to tie the sheet into a more handy shape, freeing his hands by making it into some kind of sleeveless robe with knots serving as shoulder straps. The construction seems to enhance the awful thinness of his arms, and Dante has to swallow down the lump that tries to emerge from his chest. Hesitantly, Vergil leans forward against him and wraps them around his torso, careful to keep some distance between them; it's a tight fit with both of them perching on the bike that's not really designed to have passengers, but Vergil doesn't really take any space at all. He doesn't feel great about trusting his current strength to keep holding on, but they've got no time to waste if they want to have any chance of making it, so he revs the motor alive.

“Which direction are we taking?”

“Where did you come from?” he says. Dante is crossing his fingers so that he won't be doing the Vergil thing of “answering” questions with questions all the time. It's going to be hard enough even if he's willing to lower himself to Dante's level and be cooperative: if his brother decides to get seriously difficult, they might as well roll over and die already.

“The road we're facing now.”

Vergil ponders this for a moment.

“Take the right, then.” And so he does. Pulling back on the throttle and getting them moving makes something in him feel like it's bursting, which is not that great a visual under the circumstances, but he has no better words for it. There's a finality to it that terrifies him; yeah, it's a countdown for Vergil's accelerated deterioration, but it's also like something is beginning and ending here, and that never bodes well for them. The hard-on he managed to do without earlier makes an appearance with a vengeance; just Vergil being there, wrapped around his back out of pure necessity, is enough to make him throb and ache like he was watching a full-blown striptease show of him, hale and hearty, shredding away the layers of his coats and running his fingers on the revealed lines of his body the same way he used to caress Yamato. It's better than it would be, were their positions switched and if it was him squeezed against Vergil's disturbingly fragile body, naturally, and yet he's falling apart under the lightest of touches, under the pressure of his own shame and mortification. He doesn't want to give Vergil the wrong impression about himself, but at the same time he has no idea what the right impression to give is. Pathetically weak, at least that much is obvious, flying apart at indirect contact. “Please keep your hands above the waist,” he begs in his thoughts, trying to drown out the voices that silently, wantonly beg Vergil to move them lower, slip them between his legs, rest them on the bulge straining against the stifling leather. It's a Dante's inferno of sorts − his own personal hell, this limbo between desperate lust and unbearable rejection.

They ride the undulating terrain for a while in somewhat tense silence. At least it's like that to him. Vergil could alternatively be having the time of his life or be grossed out because of sensing the sexual tension between Dante and his right hand for all he knows. Dante slaloms their way between the birches and tries to come up with something to say. No words are forthcoming. He wonders if he's dissociating − he's never had much of a brain to mouth filter when they're together, so this recent trend of speechlessness is weird, it's troubling him. Would he know if he was?

“Okay, we're taking the right. What happens next?”

“Pull over when we get to a river,” Vergil replies flatly. There's not a lot to mull over there, so Dante retreats to his awkward peacelessness and quiet.

Vergil doesn't call him out on his agitated pulse. He doesn't say anything at all. Dante wants to -- doesn't matter what he wants.

Surprisingly shortly, there is a river, maybe. It's nothing like he would have pictured rivers of Hell to be; it's very, well, lackluster, just a small, meager stream splitting the valley between two tiny hills. He's having a hard time figuring out how someone could write epic poems about this landscape.

“This a river?”

“Yes,” Vergil replies patiently, hopping off the ride. The current is so slow and scant on water that it doesn't really make any sound, so how he knows that is a mystery.

Vergil walks straight into the stream and beckons Dante to get closer, too. Easy for him to say, he's got no shoes. He takes his time stretching his legs first to make his circulation visit the northern parts of his body for a change. It makes him feel marginally better for having tried, if nothing else. Luckily, it turns out the river is shallow enough that his knee-high boots manage to keep the water out.

It's hard not to feel creeped out when Vergil turn his face towards him once he stands next to him in the middle of the stream, closed eyes still stained with the black ichor. “A knife,” he says, extending his empty palm towards him. Dante cusses under his breath and runs a quick inventory. After the incident with the tanto he's developed an aversion towards daggers and most things Japanese; as it happens, he didn't bring any with him to the island(s, he adds mentally) and the tour has provided slim pickings when it comes to new weapons. Although − Lucia had a thing for close combat and throwing perfectly functional blades at people and other targets in lieu of verbal communication. Sure enough, he finds the jeweled knife she slung at the map back in the crappy museum and hands it over hilt first. Vergil flips it and aims it at the tip of his index finger before halting. He passes it quickly back to him, blade first.

“Cut your finger open and let the blood fall into the current.” He offers no further explanations. Dante turns it around in his head when he turns the blade around in his hand and is soon hit with the realization that he can't do it himself. If blood is what they need, what good would it do if Vergil nicked himself? It wouldn't make sense even in demon standards if his circulatory system was restored but everything else stayed as is. Broken. Fading. Wrong.

Right. Déjà vu; he's been here before. He has no idea how much is sufficient, so just to be sure, he makes the slash deep, scraping the sharp edge against bone. The smell of it hits him nearly as hard as it did during the first days of the most recent after. He hisses, not because of the pain but glad for the excuse it offers. Vergil's face is utterly unreadable.

Nothing happens for a while, the droplets only get mixed into the water which washes them away. Dante, fighting the urge to vomit valiantly, is halfway to switching tactics and ripping open his palm next when Vergil turns his head towards the direction where the river is slowly shambling from. From the distance, a stronger stream surges and roars at them; the river turns dark red at the contact, and when the flood hits them, it looks like they are standing in a sea of blood. Some of it rains down upon them on the impact, little bright gems shining against the light. The amount of it is enough to raise the level to reach their knees and make Dante's footwear gulp in heavy swigs of the red liquid, but the flood isn't severe enough to drown a grown man and it's all over as quickly as it started. It feels like there should be a dramatic wind storming at them with the waves, but the air is almost eerily calm and still.

It's not water, the nondescript smell is a bit too pungent, but it's not actual gore, either. When it sloshes in his shoes, it doesn't seem to sting or corrode his toes, so maybe it's harmless, just kind of creepy.

So much for getting out with dry feet.

Vergil's clothing is starting to look rough with the wear and tear and demon blood and Dante's blood and now this crimson tide, painting the lower half of it deep scarlet. It's not his color, makes him even more sickly than the lack of colors. Something in him wants to point out that at least it's no longer clashing with the blue of his eyes. The other parts of him just want to die as usual.

He waits for the river to set again; the water level is still higher than it used to be, but it's still pretty modest for a hell river. “Was this what was supposed to happen and is it done already?” He doesn't want to be condescending, but he has no idea if Vergil has any idea of what's going on around them, so he has to make do with giving him room to ask him things if he needs to.

“Yes,” Vergil says. Alright, that was sufficiently exhaustive.

They leave the weird river in peace and go through the ordeal of packing themselves on the seat hastily.

“Continue driving to the same direction.” A wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command. Ozymandias indeed.

And continue they shall.

It turns out to be a longer ride. The view is the same than it has been for almost the whole of his excursion thus far, except it takes less time for the terrain to turn flat than it probably would have, should they have taken the same route Dante followed here. The ubiquitous birches are still plentiful and as stumped and leafless as they have been all the time. If they are an indicator of the area that heals, it's quite spacious. To have something to do inside his own crowded head, he starts to count them and tries to estimate how many of them there truly are, but it quickly proves out to be a futile exercise. There's too many. The scenery has in general turned much more unsettling after he's taken to wondering what it's made of, which makes him a grade A hypocrite, seeing how ridiculously glad he is for its existence if it has been keeping Vergil's crumbling body together. No one enjoys admitting they're the bad guy benefitting from the suffering of other sentient beings, especially when you know yourself to be beneath them in terms of compassion, virtue and general humanity (also sentience, probably). But he's glad, he really is, and he's already fearing for the time when they leave the woods and there's nothing to protect Vergil from the wickedness eating him away from inside. It turns out he wasn't really missing being afraid at all.

Now that they are sharing the same space and appear to have some time to kill, it is impossible to make up a topic for small talk. It's not like they've done that in two decades in any case, had a civil conversation with each other; maybe it's natural his mouth has been sealed shut with rust. Dante's had too much time to stew: he has approximately twenty years' worth of things he needs to let out after trying to bottle them up in vain. Not about what he's been doing as an individual − that could be summed up in a single word or a couple at most, the words only depending on how much of his pitiful vulnerability he's ready to own up to at the moment. Nothing. Working. Killing. Drinking. Forgetting. Remembering. Hiding. Evading.

_Missing you._

No, it's his mistakes he'd like to confess and the questions he's been agonizing himself with that are burning a hole in his voice box. The former he can bury next to the brother he lost at eight and hope nothing disturbs the peace and unearths what's best kept hidden, but the latter are proving out to be too stubborn a poltergeist to be cramped in a mausoleum. There's something big about this corruption thing and his plan to overcome it Vergil's not telling him. Obviously. What he really, really doesn't like about it is that Vergil was more than ready to die without mentioning the Yamato gamble to him at all. It can't have only occurred to him then; he was at the very least three limbs in the grave at that point and his head wasn't faring any better, so it's not the reason why he kept quiet about it almost to the bitter end. Maybe he was expecting something else to happen and when it didn't, he had to turn to Dante, his personified last choice in everything.

(_Waiting for Mundus to come to him_?)

Their scheme feels too fragile to be bombarded with inane queries (he doesn't think the same of Vergil, that he's too fragile, he doesn't − he also doesn't think about how he couldn't even physically handle the Molotov cocktail of lovehatelonging he's concocted and that is burning brightly in his hands and burning his hands, ready to blow up on his own face any moment now), especially when the interrogation would turn to what Vergil imagines himself doing when, if, they've managed to fix him. Knowing him, he'll incapacitate Dante and discard him in order to make another attempt on Mundus and the crown; one can only hope he's better prepared for it this time, because joining the king of Hell clearly failed to get him the power he so covets. Whether he'd do it by joining forces with him again or by confronting him on the battle field is up for further question.

On the other hand, it's foolish to assume he will have a better occasion to have these talks with him in the future; Vergil will, undoubtedly, fuck off somewhere or other once he's well enough to leave an asset to bite his dust. Unfortunately, Dante doesn't doubt his capability of beating it and abandoning him whenever it suits him − even now, when it would most likely mean him perishing −, when feels threatened enough, so he'll just keep torturing himself with the muteness.

Vergil is silent as the tomb behind him. If he wasn't bodily holding on to him, Dante would be hard pressed to notice him being there − the draw between them is taut and loud, sure, but he's imagined and ignored it before with great results. He's apparently given up on breathing entirely since there are no sounds of it coming from behind and his chest doesn't move, save for the few times he shifts and readjusts his precarious position on the back of the bike. Maybe it saves some energy, cutting out broken vital functions like that, shedding leftover features as casually as a lizard drops its tail if it becomes a handicap. Trippy, comparing Vergil to animals other than felines; now he half expects to find Vergil sporting an extra limb with reptile scales when looking back to confirm he's still alive every once in a while.

He still fully expects to meet a keen blue gaze when he turns his head. Shouldn't be that hard to remember when the evidence to the contrary is blindly staring at him whenever he cranes his neck.

Dante starts to count his own breaths in order to empty his mind, but in the end it just helps him understand how quickly the time is running out.

At first, he thinks they are arriving to an especially large clearing when he detects a lack of tree trunks on the horizon. The emptiness approaches them swiftly; they've come to the edge of the woods and are greeted by a plain of nothing but miles and miles of the same whitish grit they've been treading on god knows how long and the suffocating blackness hanging above them. No corridors of birches or technicolor northern lights to welcome them here.

He slows the bike down somewhat, but Vergil presses his arms against his stomach harder, surprisingly demanding, so he switches to their earlier speed promptly. With no instructions or orders to act otherwise, he keeps them on the set course and wonders idly if there's an anti-Argosax waiting around the corner for them to defeat. He has just noticed that the forest has disappeared from their view and directed his gaze towards the road ahead them again when Vergil speaks up, startling him after the lengthy silence.

“We need a sacrifice.“

Next thing he knows, he doesn't feel the severe weight of Rebellion on his back because Vergil has snatched it, and in less than a second the weight of his body is gone, too. He hears the sound of him hitting the ground lightly, sputtering and spitting sand after an uncharacteristically inelegant landing. It's all so sudden that it takes him long, far too long, to pull the bike to a halt, the wheels screaming with friction against the grain of the finely ground ground. When he finally manages to wrestle the frame of the motorcycle around to the direction they came from, he tries to spot him and is just on time to witness Vergil lopping off his left hand.

More like his entire arm, actually. He notes dully, paralyzed by a sudden shock, that Rebellion looks comically and grotesquely big when wielded by him, clumsy and clunky in his skeletal grip, but when it's raised high and aimed with confidence, it cuts into flesh seamlessly enough. Vergil had earlier wrapped the cotton around himself in a way that has made it possible for him to hold onto Dante by leaving his arms outside of the folds and pleats, so Dante can now see in gruesome detail how the arm falls to ground. It makes a thump that's somewhat drowned out by the enthusiastic gush of something purple. For a moment he thinks it's demon blood, because it definitely isn't his blood which Dante would recognize anywhere, but it's not that, either. It keeps coming, anyway, not caring about his disorientation. It is thinner than the solid-ish humor, the consistency similar to normal vital fluids. The cut is located in the spot that used to be where a shoulder met a limb, but Vergil had raised his hand slightly before severing it − he's real precise for someone who can't see anything −, so the sticky substance is streaming upwards in merry spurts. There's a lot of it, really, something you'd expect to see after puncturing an artery. There's a pool of it on the sand too, the bone greedily absorbing it, and for some reason it's weird that the amputated part isn't wiggling and twitching on the ground. Vergil's mouth is half open and bright lilac, a stubborn violet in the rain.

He doesn't remember how and when he gets closer to him and doesn't give a shit, but when he's there, a couple of feet from where he's bleeding, he knows he's stripped out of his coat and is frantically trying to rip off his shirt while simultaneously inspecting the damage. There are no bones visible in the amputation site, and instead of red gory flesh he sees something dark purple that neither resembles animal tissue nor the black goo he's had to familiarize himself with lately. Whatever it is, it seems to hold him together somehow, so what he should focus on is the fact that losing the strange fluid is decidedly doing him harm at present. His brother is talented at dying; he'll manage to kick the bucket due to hemorrhage even without any hemoglobin.

Vergil is biting his teeth. There's a splatter of the color on his face, on his lips, and the whiteness stands out almost as much as the silence ringing in their surroundings. He hasn't made a sound but looks like he should be screaming bloody murder. He lets Rebellion fall with a dull sound and takes a rattling inhale before stumbling to the side.

Vergil is shivering when he grabs his side, hanging his head down and twitching like he's trying to move the fingers that now lie on the sand. It makes him violently sick (weren't they just here, why are they here again), but he keeps the bile down because he has to focus on his idiot of a _whatthefuckishedoing_ \-- he shoves his shirt against the cut despite Vergil clacking his tongue like he's protesting (could be that he's just choking on something, not the weirdest thing someone going into shock has done in his presence) and presses it mercilessly to suppress the flow, to slow down the speed of him fading away. Now he makes a sound, a pained cry in the back of his throat, hoarse, and Dante props him against his own chest, to keep him still and in place.

“Burn it,” Vergil manages. Dante would roll his eyes if they weren't feeling uncomfortably tight.

“Burn it,” he repeats with a challenging note in his voice when Dante lets go for a moment and replaces the soaked portion of the fabric with a drier part.

“No, I'm tending to you now. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What isn't?” he's almost laughing, now. Dante's not one to judge, but he sounds delirious. Also, there is precisely nothing amusing about Vergil destroying himself. He keeps the pressure on the stump and Vergil lets himself lean against him, the erratic energy slowly leaving his demeanor.

“I didn't quite anticipate it to be so messy,” he concedes and rests his head against Dante's shoulder. He feels his lips ghost against his skin at the last word and hopes selfishly that his shiver blends into Vergil's trauma.

“Why, though? Burn it, I mean.“ He balances his chin on top of Vergil's head because he can't bring himself to look at his face, not when he's close like this, not even when he can't see how masterfully he's struck Dante. Once again. Again and again and again. Stripped from his healing abilities, he'd look just like him, more cracks and holes than man. He, too, is a shade between empty spaces.

“Blood is not cheap,” Vergil whispers. “A resourceful warlock could use it to enhance his own power or pay his dues if nothing else, and it is best not to give them that chance. Besides, it's a blood sacrifice we are talking about. It seems fitting, a holocaust to the chthonic deities.”

Dante decides the skim over the parts that he disagrees with; whatever the fuck the purple is supposed to be, it certainly isn't blood. He gets the gist of it, so fixating on such irrelevant details as the terrifying things happening to his brother's insides is not productive to their getting out of Hell and back to the land of the living. He hums and Vergil sighs, tired.

When things start to calm down, he risks a peek at the injury. The bleeding has finally stopped and the cut is clean, the only thing visible being the glistening mystery not-flesh. It's wet and looks like it has to be sore, so he fashions a bandage out of Vergil's robe − good that there's so much of the textile, seeing that they need to shred it every other second. It's looking less and less fashionable by the minute, now coated also in lilac and the hems lopsided. He can see Vergil's naked shin and ankle before he folds himself into a sitting position and raises his chin expectantly.

He doesn't have to repeat himself again. Dante walks back to the motorcycle he apparently shoved to the ground in his hurry, uselessly pointing an accusing finger at him. “Never do this to me again.”

“Worry not. I have only so many limbs,“ he replies while Dante rummages through the gas tank. Yeah, no fuel here. Got to do this the old-fashioned way too, then, because Vergil seems almost as hell-bent on torching the appendage as he was about amputating it.

“When we do whatever it is you need the Yamato for, will it grow back?” he asks while he looks around for rocks or sticks or something, their new catchphrase of nothing growing out of a void ringing in his ears. It's all finely powdered and the birches are conveniently absent. He's ready to give up when he notices a pile of firewood behind Vergil's back. He doesn't think it was there when they got here, but then again, he was distressed enough that it could have escaped his notice. The wood is precisely cut into neat prism shapes and properly dry, the telltale black and white bark clinging to the sides. Gift horses and mouths − he hauls the logs in front of his twin and builds a simple campfire.

“Perhaps.” Vergil doesn't seem to be concerned. At least he didn't choose to sever his sword arm, not that he's any less dangerous when having his katana in his left. It remains to be seen if that's something he will get the chance to witness ever again. Fucking Vergil.

His boy scout skills are failing him; the composition is fine but he can't kindle it by rubbing pieces of birch together. Vergil keeps looking distantly amused; must be the not-blood loss making him all loopy. Fine. Dante throws the offending blocks away and triggers unceremoniously. Unlike his brother, he's never cared enough to learn how to channel his energies in such a way that he could do these things in plain clothes − the wizardry is Vergil's hobby and he's not up to performing magic tricks today. Like this, Dante can do it, though; soon, there's a fire going on.

He's halfway to shedding his scaled figure when there's a flicker of electricity running down his skin; he thinks he senses Vergil's presence press against something inside him. It's not unpleasant even when it makes him jump and scintillates in his veins, a heat blooming in his stomach. He can't read the tone of his mind, no matter how distinctly it's brushing against his, and suddenly it withdraws as if burned. It's the almost-blood loss, he tells himself when he switches back to his hornless but unfortunately no less horny form. He's been acting weird when faint from hemorrhage himself.

He doesn't know how to do this, so he just dumps the mutilated appendage into the flames. It feels wrong − well, in many respects, he should make a list − to be so blasé about it, but Vergil's the expert on ancient rites and general good manners here, and he's not helping. The chunk of dead meat makes a thud when it hits the ground, as if it's heavier now, loose, than it was when it was attached to his once-lookalike. The fire sputters a little, affronted by the breaches in the etiquette, but soon it begins to crackle as eagerly as before. At least the offering is good. Some time ago, he would've liked to dump himself into the cheery little bonfire of theirs as well − what is he is not a defunct hunk of less than human flesh, after all? He's not going to end that thought on an uplifting note; the feeling's still there, but he has a concrete purpose for postponing it sitting down near him and looking in this stolen moment so vulnerable, so trusting, that he wonders if the clenching sensation in his chest will ever fade. Suddenly completely sapped, Dante slumps down next to Vergil who is curled on the luminous sand and watches the pyre attentively. Well, doesn't, fuck, but he's facing the fire observantly, maybe warming up his tattered face. He seems captivated by the sacrificial rites, so Dante, feigning to be more daring than he really is, sighs theatrically and scoots closer.

It's almost like a camping trip under a particularly gloomy and oppressive sky, except it's really nothing like that at all. All the same, they sit there in sand, nearly touching, and watch the hand burn until only ashes remain. Vergil scoops the dust up carefully with his unsevered hand and blows it into the still air, looking disquietingly serene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time on the Dante torture show: 50K celebrations by a reunion of sorts.


	10. x. To True Shades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter: Dante has a bad time. Happy 50 (almost 60) K :D
> 
> Since the story comes to a certain turning point now, this is a good time to say thank you to everyone leaving feedback this far. Special thanks to commenters, you always make my day :)
> 
> (This got too long, but I just couldn't leave the ending to chapter eleven, which will be short, really.)

“Okay, so they've met the dead queen and other dead wounded people, talked a lot about punishments and walked on some happy fields with his dead dad, yay. But how do they get out? They have to do that, right, 'cause you said Aeneid finds Rome or somethin', and he hasn't done that yet.” Dante has to blink so that his eyes won't slip closed and go to sleep without permission. Not yet, they're in the middle of a story. It matters because it matters to Vergil. Dante is still kinda unimpressed, not enough fighting and they haven't even met Satan who seems cool from what he's ever heard of him, but Vergil cares about these things so he has to care too.

He wants to see if Vergil smiles that secret little smile he saves just for Dante, like he fears he runs out of it if he uses it too much and lets just anyone see it, or even Mother. It's somehow a bit sad and he doesn't understand it, but at the same time he likes it, likes being the only one Vergil wants to share that kind of stuff with. He sure doesn't like waiting for things and wants to have everything always and now, sweets and Christmas presents and their swimming trips down the lake, all before dinner and in the middle of this raging snowstorm in the middle of deepest February, but whenever he catches the sight of Vergil's mouth melting into a small grin, it feels like he's holding a will o' the wisp, so beautiful not only because it's so pretty but also because it's so rare. But he's pressed against him close and cozy, and the hand he isn't holding the book with is resting on the back of his head warmer than any blanket, making lazy circles against his scalp like some secret writing he doesn't know how to read exactly but catches the meaning of, anyway. He can't see his expression without moving and letting the soft drowsiness escape into cold air. Maybe if he concentrates he can hear it in his voice.

He's forgotten why he came to him tonight. Isn't important now, he thinks. Must've been a reason because he doesn't want to get Vergil into trouble with Mom, but it's hard to think of bad things when he's feeling all protected and maybe also gets to protect him just by being with him, which is almost better. He's older, sure, and independent, all that jazz, but that means he thinks too easily that he should be able to handle everything alone. Dante won't let him. They're better together, always, and stronger, and Vergil knows this too, he doesn't say it but it's true. It's how it works. If they hold hands, Vergil holds him back.

“Aeneas,” he says mildly. He's still drawing on his skin, but the shape changes into small triangles. Dante's not a cat person like him so he doesn't purr, but there's a hum vibrating in his chest. Feels nice, feels safe. “Aeneid or Aeneis is the name of the entire poem. Romulus, his descendant and the twin of Remus, is the one who establishes the city.” Dante puffs a “close enough” against his breast. He thinks he senses the smile now.

Vergil flips through a couple of pages before answering his actual question. He does that sometimes, lets him wait for it, and it's annoying, usually. “There are only a few lines about that at the end of book six. Anchises, Aeneas' father if you've forgotten the name already, tells him his fortune, that he's to be the first in a line of great men in a faraway land. You know, Italy. After that, they walk to the two gates of sleep, one made of horn and the other of shiny ivory. Aeneas and priestess Sibylla of Cumae walk through the white one and see the ships and men waiting for them.”

“But that's not hard,” he slurs, sleep creeping into his speech and muddling the words like it's stretching lazily in them. His r gets longer and sharper, the other sounds mushier. He says his name; Verrrgil. Brother makes a low sound high in his throat like he often does when he's thinking but Dante's demanding a quick answer.

“First of all, he had the golden branch that made things a lot easier and plenty of help, too; he did not have to do it on his own. I also think the point is that leaving is difficult because of having to deal with the memories of everything that has happened to him in the underworld and not just giving up. He has to live with knowing what happened to Dido and remember how she would no longer even react to his pleas. That maybe it was all his fault.” He takes a contemplative pause before continuing. His hand lies still in his hair. It's a comfortable weight.

“Sometimes, it is not the journey itself that is hard, it's the past and the aftermath.”

If Vergil says anything else, he doesn't hear it, because this is where he falls asleep.

\--

There's a door.

Just like with the skittish rivulet, it's not what Dante pictured the gates of Hell to be like. Not that he's dedicated that much time to thinking about Hell in general − actually it's the opposite, he's put a lot of time and effort into avoiding the topic of the netherworld after he had lost everything to its rapacious maw in nineteen years and was still left standing himself for an endless decade. Avoidance became a full-time job considering what his actual job consists of: it's no wonder it isn't that easy to push the downstairs to the back of his mind when he's up to his eyeballs in hell spawn on the regular. The demon realm was standard imagery in his childhood, though, and sometimes those memories resurface against his will. Alcohol helps to some degree, but turns out he has to be sober-ish to acquire it and must obtain something to buy it with every now and then. Then he's at his weakest, a prime target for flashbacks. Tales of flaming rivers and worlds of shadows told in a calm voice in the dead of the night, when every wall around was falling on him and something was looming behind the ruins and always, always watching him through the cracks. It was the most he ever heard him speak and the words weren't even his own.

Well, it's not that, like those dusty legends of yore, and not like Christian tales of it either. Good old saint Pete has apparently misplaced his keys and locked himself outside with Charon the ferryman; there's no one to herd lost souls down here, and it's slowly starting to become creepy that, apart from the insects Vergil totaled, they've met absolutely nothing that could offer a fair fight, were he to do the Dante thing and attempt to beat the shit out of his steadily bloating uneasiness by beating the shit out of some poor living thing. He measures the entrance from a distance. What are the chances of it containing a tussle against some hostiles and do they have time for one, anyway? To him, their timetable is as much of a black hole as their overall plan. Vergil looks still the same - bad, it's bad and not getting better -, no help for any estimations there. Steadily dissolving but currently in one piece, just a much smaller piece than what's in any way sustainable.

(Are they talking about days or week or months or hours here? Earth or Hell time?)

So. The door is the question and the key, even if it's not as spectacular as one could imagine. Lucifer kind of has a disappointingly ordinary taste in design. Maybe it's just a branch and the main attraction is located somewhere else.

The pearly gates in front of them are not carved of elephant bone, for the first; the surface is smooth, lacquered wood instead, so deep blue that it looks black at the first blush. Light hits it weirdly; it seems to reflect more than it absorbs despite being so dark. Somewhat surprisingly considering their earlier surroundings, it's not birch; Dante can't detect the telltale knots, and the texture of the grain is wrong, too much luster. Looks like mahogany to him, like a high-end desktop he's never afforded but has seen pictured in shiny magazines, although trying to put a name to a magical object hanging around in the underworld is a fool's errand with his limited grasp of the lore that people have evidently been gathering for thousands of years. More likely it, too, is made of the boiled spleens of starved babies or whatever.

The frame is simple and understated, sheeny varnished steel running around the sides in dark, thin stripes. The handle is faithful to the same theme with its sleek, no-frills looks. It's something he could see leading to someone's expensive office, that of someone important. It's plain enough to be in so-called good taste and still leave the visitor with the impression of ostentatious wealth carefully played down. Sure, he can imagine that, but it hardly looks like something that could take you to another worlds. Or, wait, he might have to rephrase the thought; seeing that seeing a door like that in human world would mean getting rid of the guards that might be a bit unwilling to let a slovenly hobo smelling of old booze in on such prestigious premises, he supposes it could be called a different universe back there too, however banal and non-magical. Anyway, this is Hell, nonetheless; everything about it is made less mundane by the fact that it's floating in thin air, a foot or two from the ground and seemingly supported by nothing. Dante fully expects to see the backside of it if he goes round it; something makes him hold back, though, prevents him from even trying to catch a glimpse of what a side view of it looks like. There's this weird air to it. Hard to put it into words when it's barely there, a small charge in his spine he could almost mistake merely for his muscles falling asleep. The aura also muddles any wooden smell the thing might have with a tinge of eucalyptus. Demon bullshit, that's a surefire way to recognize devil influence.

(“Don't look at Hell because it will look back,” a memory from somewhere advises him. He ignores it but doesn't get closer to the door, either.)

Is he allowed to say it's pretty underwhelming without jinxing everything and making something bad happen? This only shows what an ungrateful brat he is, really − shouldn't it be nice to have anticlimactic things occur for a change? His sails are pretty much one blast away from collapse, why the fuck is he complaining?

“To focus on something harmless and neutral instead of chewing over the things you should if you actually tried to make progress,” the goblin frolicking in his brain that some call a soul and the others a conscience, always such a helpful bastard, supplies. “You're not a man, you're a tortured animal in its dismal cage and at the end of the day, you like it that way,” it continues. “Look; a lock pick has been dangled in front of you plenty of times but you never take it; the fall, the Angelo, suicide, all missed opportunities. You're not in love with your brother, you're in love with your own misery, I've told you this before. The cell was wide open a while ago and yet you managed to screw even that up by failing to let him put you out − you don't want to solve your problems, you wallow in them and make a pigsty. Do us both a favor and stop kicking against the goads.”

It's funny because it's true, he guesses.

He hears Vergil get off the bike and walk to him. Dante doesn't ask which of his senses he uses to locate him. If he doesn't base it on the bitter smell of cremation adhering to his clothes and hair, his navigational skills are kind of eerie. His undershirt is still wrapped around Vergil's stump and he's glad for deciding to wear it, mostly because he thought it could get chilly on the island and not because of some sense of modesty he's never had (not that the thought of unknown eyes on him sits well with him these days, if it ever has; he props his collar up and hides from the reminder of things he's never to experience, pretending it all falls like water off his back). If he ever makes it, there's a strong likelihood that he'll have to get rid of this coat like its predecessors − the stains would be a bitch to clean if they even came off, Vergil clawed the front of the thing into shreds that now flap uselessly on him, and it smells of clinical death in addition to the whiff of iron and ozone and Vergil already clinging to it.

Sensing his scent on him however faintly will only muddle his brain more, which is really not something they can't do without. If they weren't running on a tight schedule here, he could've taken a bath in the red river and at least tried to get rid of it. One thing to add to the endless pile of things that are not right with his brother: his scent is nowhere near as potent as it used to be. It took him a while to confirm it was him when he was facing the demonic bugs, after all. Shouldn't be possible, but here they are, here he is, almost on his skin. It's affecting him like it always has, it's still addicting and overwhelming and exquisitely terrible, but there's a world of difference between the current version and the has been. It has been shown time and time again that Dante's not that great at adapting to changes. This change isn't the blessing in disguise it could be if you supposed that the scent being weaker would help his head stay clearer. Great thinking in theory; in practice, however, he's fixating on it hard, since it's still easier than looking at him. He'd prefer to resort to his usual non-survival strategy − imaginary nighttime stalkers and all kinds of unwelcome boogeymen like memories and buried, self-resurrecting hopes are easier to ignore if he cowers behind the gentle haze of a bender − but alas, there's no alcohol and the fewer limbs and organs Vergil has, the more need he has for him. Not him personally, for help, generally.

This is not what he meant when he wished he could be of use back in the clearing. It's exactly why he shouldn't have thrown the last coin he had loitering in his pocket into a well of wonders. If you desire for things you don't really understand at all, you accept the consequences. (Why does it always have to be Vergil, though? He's killed remorselessly and will do it again, given the chance, but he gets crucified for Dante's transgressions even though he's never allowed Dante to shoulder his blame, to be his brother's keeper. At this point he'd require nothing else to be happy than hanging next to him, probably not given the permission to share his cross but at least being propped up on one nearby and getting consolation from knowing his Abel won't have to go through it all alone. But the mark of Cain prevents anything from touching him and it's getting harder and harder to understand why he doesn't just do it himself when he'd rather take the sevenfold retribution his killer has been promised than this.

Vergil. Vergil's the answer but also the reason.)

After Vergil was satisfied with the incineration of the hand, Dante helped him on the ride despite his wordless protests. He considered slowing down because Vergil's grip had been far from firm when he had two arms to cling to him already; now he had to huddle closer and drape the arm into some sort of choke hold and he was still on the verge of falling off, no need to slash Dante and prevent him from reaching out this time. When he did try to adjust the speed down, he instantly felt Vergil's mouth press against his ear, freezing hot chills racing down his neck. “Don't,” he said in a raspy voice. He had to notice how his body jerked involuntarily even if he wasn't paying attention to how his traitorous cock jumped at the contact. Having his hands baptized with cold sweat didn't exactly help with carrying out the command in disguise, but he managed. Stupid sexy dying Vergil. Stupid overexcitable heart.

It's good that their next waypoint announced its presence by having Vergil request that they pull up soon after; it didn't take long for Dante to spot what they apparently were looking for either. Less time to spend trapped inside his head and his tight pants. He's nowhere near ready to analyze and deal with how he feels about Vergil not dying yet, if that's what has happened. The world of ifs again. His mind is swimming but the water is dim, so he doesn't have to see where he's sinking. He's an unintelligent gun, all his brilliance premade mechanics and muscle memory; Vergil can aim and point him pretty much any direction he wants if he deigns such a blunt weapon worth wielding.

“So. The next step?”

“I must get to Yamato,” he says. Dante makes a heroic effort to resist the urge to snipe back at him. _Yes_, Vergil, he knows this. It's, in fact, pretty much the only thing he knows.

They bring out the worst out in each other. How he ever thought they could converse long enough to agree on elopement can only be explained by per milles and hormones and degrees of active psychosis. 

There's no banding Vergil with a ring when he's missing his left hand, anyway.

It's not a loss if it has never happened. Never would've._ Focus_.

“But how do we get to the place where Yamato is, even if we get back to the other side? Where is she anyway?”

Vergil not-looks at him. “There is a door,” he answers in a helpful tone.

“Yeah, I can see that,” he says and winces at his poor choice of words. Still too soon. “But that doesn't really explain anything. The door might be more willing to provide me with answers, you're right about that, but I'm not asking it, I'm asking you.”

Vergil sighs. “We shall go through the door which takes us to the place where Yamato is kept currently.” The “and then we will take her by force if necessary” is unvoiced but blatantly more than implied. It should be bothering him how much it doesn't bother him, the promise of violence. As it is, it's just one addition to his list of sins, which is extensive enough that the ping of his conscience that's supposed to happen now doesn't even register. Furthermore, it's not just about what reclaiming the katana will cost to unwitting humans and his immortal soul or whatever. With her, who knows what he'll be able to accomplish if he survives the separating something something thing he is now relying on. See what he cares; Dante is tired to the bone and beyond. Sure, let him raise a new Temen-ni-gru or play house with the false Antichrist if that what's required to get some kind of resolution to this bullcrap and makes him happy and not a corpse.

“And a door to that place just happens to be here? That's awfully convenient.”

“No, I summoned it here by committing the sacrifice,” Vergil says slowly and patiently, put upon, like he's explaining complicated metaphysics to a child that has the audacity not to understand. Well, excuse him, but some of them are experiencing their first time of escaping Hell with a guide that's doing his best to withhold the directions. The Vergil who's dicking around in the _Commedia_ is a judgmental asshole if you ask Dante, no relation to the author, but at least he is as pleased and gleeful as anyone named Vergil could ever be to showcase the horrors of Hell to his burden in extensive detail. This Vergil, too taciturn to be much of a poet, has yet to reveal which circle this is. Dante expects his personal, final geological disposal to be on the ninth where they bury those who have let their relatives fall into a permafrost up to the neck, but there's some potential with the seventh floor for the sodomites, too; having to wander aimlessly for all eternity without ever getting anywhere sounds about what he's been up to for some decades. What a bitch, the other Dante: none of that sounds too bad. Why someone as powerful as his sibling would value something as wimpy as lyricists he just doesn't get.

If he's willing to indulge him to this extent, in any case, he could push a little further.

“And the thing with the river, what was that for?”

“Payment for leaving the forest. There are certain places one can enter gratis, flounder in mindlessly without having a care in the world, but the underworld will nevertheless exact its payment sooner or later, and the interests tend to be high. Since the costs of leaving that particular region are rather unpleasant, I chose the sooner.”

Ah, a hotel California type of a situation, then. “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave,” he mumbles under his breath, concluding that his idle theory of the trees being some unfortunate souls might well hold true. This begs the question what had been done to produce the golden Sacrifices he somehow knows for sure to hail from Hell, but to think of it again, he doesn't want to know.

Well, it is what it is. He shrugs and sets out to take a peek at their newest means of transport, but Vergil grabs his arm by his sole hand and stops him. He only fumbles somewhat with his aiming, poking him in the back before reaching his goal. Sharp instincts or good luck?

“Wait,” Vergil warns him. “It is under a spell of mine. If it was unprotected, any demon could use it and exhaust the thaumaturgy. I must dispel the hex guarding it, first.”

Dante gestures at the door in a universal “be my guest” fashion, but then he realizes it fails to convey his consent to the intended recipient. “You do that.” He doesn't ask what it would do to him if he didn't. They don't need him jumping at it to try and destroy himself.

His gait is steadier than expected, what with having a large chunk of his body removed and all. Then again, maybe losing it doesn't affect his balance because it weighed so little. It's shot to hell anyway, Vergil's poise, when compared to the good old days of him stomping Dante to the curb with his katana and running off with lecherous older men. It's not fair to him to compare his past self to this but it's inevitable that Dante does it, because he's had him frozen in time inside the snow globe of his mind, nineteen and zealous and devastatingly easy on the eyes. Then again, his memories are a faulty time capsule, little more than glorified 70s' photographs that lose their contrast and turn yellow like leaves on the brink of winter until there's more distortion than the original picture left to flip through; the exhumation never does him any justice whatsoever under any circumstances. Dishonoring his memory silently is currently the least of his sins.

Vergil crouches before the door and draws a straight line between him and it on the sand with his hand. It's precise enough for someone not recovering from a non-medical amputation of an arm. Instead of drawing any fancy magic circles, he holds still and mutters his chant in a low voice, nearly inaudible even in the surrounding stillness:

“_ille meis tantum non umquam desit ocellis,_

_incendat navem Iuppiter ipse licet._

_certe isdem nudi pariter iactabimur oris:_

_me licet unda ferat, te modo terra tegat_.”

The incantation sounds familiar very, very remotely. Out of instinct, he thinks of the lake near their childhood manor through a faded yellow lens which colors the streaming sunlight of his memories the same nostalgic hue, dying strands of Vergil's sterling hair golden. He could have idly tucked it behind his ear while reciting dead words in dead languages at him; Dante almost sees him sitting under a thick leafy tree, half-covered in shadow and some thick leather-bound tome cuddling his lap. Maybe it's something he read to him on a day like that, sun in his hair and on his tongue.

“The other Vergil?” he hazards a guess.

Vergil scoffs. “Propertius.” Well, yeah, that wouldn't have been his next choice. Judging by his tone, it was not even close; good that he's not a gambling man with all the odds always stacked against him. Seems that they won't be sharing a bonding moment over shared trivial knowledge then.

Vergil, still stooped in front of the gateway, raises his hand. To him, it seems like he does it to clap it against his left palm to try and dust off the sand clinging to the dry wounds. That doesn't happen, obviously, and he doesn't pick at the cracks either because he can't, just lets it stay there, beyond his touch and stare. Keeps forgetting his newly acquired handicap, perhaps?

“How well do you remember your Latin?” he asks him measuredly. He seems only mildly curious in an uncaring way, but there is more to it, somehow; like his response will be meaningful to him in some capacity, a blade hidden in nonchalant curiosity. Demanding a straight answer will only spook him, though. Dante is holding his life on his palm, there's no room for his clumsy attempts of playing his hand right and sly there. 

“Not well,” he confesses. “I got stuck on the first verb. Something about Jupiter and earth and ships − no, a ship, I think −, that's all I figured out.“

“Hortative conjunctive, third-person singular present of active voice,” Vergil spouts out absent-mindedly. “That's not unexpected. You never cared for learning to interpret the views of others.”

That should be a sign for him to challenge him, a straight-out invitation to argue in Vergil speak. Sure enough, there's an automatic backlash bubbling up from deep inside him like a chemical reaction: it's something ugly and rash and it seeps to his gums past his teeth like blood or bile. But − he doesn't feel like letting it out. Funny; there are few things he's preferred to fighting him in any possible way. Here he is, realizing how much of a stranger he's become to himself, not jumping to a chance that's laid out so generously at his feet like the immature bundle of impulses he is and has always been. Ought to be. He swallows the retorts back without stopping to taste what precise shape they would've taken, had he flung them at his first and last opponent in everything. It's the Vergil brand of honesty of not blurting out everything that crosses one's mind and he hates it, but they're better off with him keeping his feelings down. Even so, it certainly is an experience to come across something so quintessentially Vergil and connecting that to the ruins of a man perching in sand. Everything's so fucking ironic these days.

“You got me there. What's it about, then?”

Vergil shows no signs of surprise at his passiveness. “Sacrificing what is relatively worthless to the sea in order to salvage things that are worth more. Don't mind the whim; it could have been any sequence of words.”

He gets the impression he's feeding him a partial truth, a half-truth at most and that's if he's feeling generous with his estimate. There's always an angle when it's about him. Fine, Vergil's not telling him things − what else is new? At this point it might be a necessary evil that he doesn't know anything at all, because this grating uncertainty is for sure easier to bear than having his unnamed fears confirmed in plain words. At least he can function to some capacity like this. Let him have his secrets, even if it drives Dante to the grave − if he's desperate enough to consider his arms “relatively worthless”, he's got to be motivated enough to cling to his life through hell and high water. Dante will settle for that, he's settled for less.

“So, did you only hail a cab by cutting off a part of your body or did you pay the toll for passing through the door, too?”

Vergil inclines his head at his direction, maybe to acknowledge his unexpected savviness, maybe to flex his stiff neck. His regenerative genes aren't doing much at all, so they definitely aren't taking care of any extra rigidity, even though Dante has no idea how that could come about if he's got no muscles. “I have full confidence in your abilities to get us through,” he says. It's the former, then: he's bought them a door with his butcher job but that's where it ends. By the look of things, Vergil's expecting a fight. With how well things have been going this far, that should be something.

“Sure. And after I do that, whatever it is that I gotta do, then the door will take us to… where, exactly?”

“To Yamato.”

“And where is that?” He feels like a child who keeps riling up his parents by asking them if they're there yet every three seconds, but he will abuse patience if he detects a shred of it when it concerns getting his brother out of this place in as few lumps as possible. Also, Vergil is being a dick on purpose, probably, so he'll stand some attitude from him, maybe.

“You might know the location by the name Fortuna.”

“It does ring a bell.”

He's never been to the city proper. As far as Dante knows, nothing ever happens there. Seeing that he's only getting calls when things happen and go wrong, there has been no incentive for a visit. If his memory serves correct, the only public event they ever advertise is some kind of ecclesiastical music festival type of thing in the springtime − not really his cup of tea, churches and him are a bad combination, plus he knows Mundus is no Lucifer and above Hell there's just the human world, no room for Jesus or actual, non-fallen angels anywhere. Other than that, he doesn't remember hearing anything about the town at all, just that it's somewhere near Red Grave City, which in itself is enough to quell any interest he might have in biblical chants and whatnot.

Alright, this he can work with. Vergil seems to agree it's time to get things moving. He begins getting up but gets off balance almost instantly due to the folds of his clothing roping around his legs. He sways and has to prop his palm on the ground to restore his equilibrium.

“Want some help?” he offers. Vergil sneers expressionlessly and gets back up probably purely out of spite.

He's aware they've just tacitly made a deal about not talking, but there's always this one more thing for someone as selfish as he is. He watches the stained bandage and finds himself speaking before he realizes it.

“If that black stuff was Mundus' corruption… The purple tissue holding you together, what is that?”

“Nature abhors a void,” Vergil echoes drily while signaling him to get closer to the portal. Dante can't detect whether he's bothered about the breach in contract or not. “Something was required to fill the empty space the infection left behind and, as you well know by now, the energy for that must come from somewhere.”

“So it's power from Rebellion.” Maybe that makes sense. Sparda sealed a lot of it away at Temen-ni-gru, so it stands to reason that their family weapons should have some in them as well.

“It is yours,” Vergil says. His tone doesn't change at all, neither does anything in his disposition, but it feels like a sudden blast of wind blows through them both, unhinging the situation and making the picture frame of this scene crooked. Now unbalanced himself, Dante agrees that their conversation is over even if he has no idea what to make of this information, how to react. He doesn't, just to be sure.

(Coward.)

It's time they moved forward, anyway.

Okay, the door. The door is in front of him and isn't wide enough for two. Dante can't come up with any other solution to his sudden problem than taking Vergil's remaining hand in his and pulling him after him when he pushes the gate open. Caught under a spell, in a myth, he can't look back at the apparition behind him. As if he'll shatter into dust, vanish into thin air if he turns, an Eurydike to his Orpheus. If he goes quickly, Vergil might not realize that this is a perfect occasion for him to disappear; given too much time, he might not follow him and then he's all alone again, and the scar on his hand pulses violently and he feels overtly light in his head and corroded by the sick in his stomach, hideous anxiety distorting his features. He hopes some Bacchantes will be there to rip him into shreds if he finds himself on the other side on his lonesome.

He walks into the abyss.

\--

The transition from point A to point B is seamless. Dante steps forward and up and feels nothing when he passes through the doorframe and into some other dimension, just gets swallowed up by an abrupt darkness clouding his vision. His boot meets solid ground instantly when he lowers it and tries to feel his way around. His other foot follows without any problems and that's it, he's here, wherever that is. At least for the most part − his hand is still wrapped around Vergil's chipped palm and drawn back as far as his arm can reach, and it's somehow difficult to know if it's through the portal, if he's come through, already, if he will. For some reason he's not panicking, he doesn't know why.

A disconnected thought flashes in and out of his head; Hell is empty. The phrase is longer than that but he doesn't hear how it ends, doesn't remember. He's… he doesn't know, he's detached from both his own head and body and the surroundings, the cool blackness stretching on and on around him. If he could form opinions about things, he might think it rather nice if not for the hint of poison lingering in the air. It's merely a droplet in the ocean, diluted by the still masses of water, and yet he can taste the cloyingly sweet flavor of the neurotoxin on his lips. Belladonna, devil's herb, sleepy nightshade. Strange. Familiar…

Dante rather senses than hears Vergil step into the void after him. His bare soles make a pair of raindrop-quiet slaps. One, two. Then it's silent. He halts, doesn't breathe. Does Dante? Can't tell. Can't see. His hand goes limp and Dante lets go of it, all at once weak and drained by the silent clanging in his ears that is, like him, muffled under a heavy velvet blanket of _something_.

There is something in the dark. It's not a living thing, but it does have a presence nonetheless, in the back of his mind, in his chest behind his heart. Just a tinge. A small, shiny black berry. He turns it on his tongue. Poison. Something's bleeding it. On the moment he entered the area he was hit in the face by the sensation of something being wrong. Not like things are amiss usually; more like a dose of synthetic nerve agent, a needle at the back of his head. He swallows the fruit to forget it. It's not that. But. There is something dwelling in the dark and it knows his name.

He's been here before, he's felt this before.

(“_Where_?” The question his brain produces is faint, he doesn't think he hears it.)

He realizes belatedly that his body is not behaving as calmly as he thought. Every hair on him seems to stand upright and his stomach churns as if poured to fullness with molten lead and mercury, both bubbling and frothing and sinking to the bottom and weighing him down. Feels like it's happening to someone else.

He steps forward, his feet moving on their own accord, following a pipe song he can't hear but knows to be thrumming on his membranes. In his trance he doesn't pay any attention to Vergil's whereabouts; for perhaps the first time in his life he slips past his mind completely when he knows he's present. His twin's presence dissolves away from his consciousness and he doesn't notice it happening, doesn't care. The apprehension foreboding in the depths of his body and rolling closer to his epidermis drowns everything else out, fills his head with a white noise that is shrieking so forcefully that it clangs and pelts against his ear drums, no matter that there are no actual sounds in the emptiness.

He can't hear his own footsteps even though he should. The ground is hard as stone and he plods farther into the blank space mindlessly and still his heels are silent against the surface. He's dragged forward by an unseeable thread, like a guitar string, it's coiled around his neck and stomach and goes through his mouth into his innards, another one in his nose, running into his brain, one entering from the corner of his eye and choking his spleen. He doesn't hear anything; no thick, stiff static filling his ears this time. He just follows the silent call. The pied piper is holding the wires and pulls.

_Let us go to the field._

_Let's go the lake._

Then, the tow goes missing. He halts to the spot and feels his vision come back to him; the road to this waypoint has been blind, he hasn't perceived anything in the darkness. It's not complete, though: it's a lack brightness but not a total one, and in the low light he can see what he's dreaded, now and countless moments in between, the invisible stain spreading between the layers of his skin until he's covered in it from head to toe, hidden and explicit.

This can't be mistaken for anything else.

Standing tall in the middle of the dusky shadows, shrouded in a contemplative lassitude, is the Angelo, supporting its crude broadsword in a peaceful resting pose. It holds its helmet-covered head high and proud, but it seems for all intents and purposes that it could be leaning it against the sword in sleepy tranquility. There's a soft edge to its appearance; it's warmly content like after a satisfying, full meal and basking in the warmth of a gentle log-fire and bedcovers. Like a reposing big cat, deadly and happy. Its unseeing eyes don't drill into him violently like they did when they fought back on the island; the touch is slow and measuring. Like it's stroking him like a pet and humoring its hapless prey. Careful but secure in having the catbird seat. The places it maps out with the gaze don't turn hotter under the contact, though; from his skin, a chill seeps into his dermis and fatty tissue until it condenses inside his bone marrow into solid ice.

The stare, dead as it is, is somehow wrong − it's blue, dull and flat, and he's not sure, but he thinks that maybe, maybe that's not what it's supposed to be like, but then, what it should be he doesn't know. It's not right, or rather, it's particularly wrong in the middle of everything else that's fucked up. But − does it matter? He's here with a purpose, after all, any scraps of his memory floating up are insignificant, he ought to let them sink beneath the surface, into the black sea. He must go forward. It's here, in the darkness with him. Together alone. As it is meant to be.

A dawning horror sneaks its way into his veins − it's in his way again and the only way is forward; it's the two of them again and only one is leaving in one piece, again. Doesn't matter that his limbs are petrified by the waving fear, he's done it three times and he can do it again and again, as many times as needed, it's just another marionette and he needs to cut it off its strings to get to Mundus and finish this, get his bitter revenge. He just has to draw out Alastair before it lunges at him and it will go on from there, the fighting, the killing, the dying, and then, if he emerges victorious, he'll finally go through the heavenly door into the celestial chamber, hear the tender urns play a somber funerary fugue to the brother whose death is fresh on his hands --

Vergil.

Vergil's dead. He's killed Vergil, the Angelo.

Vergil.

Vergil's dead. Vergil --

Where's Vergil?

His name is like hitting the surface of freezing water, in which he has been suffocating for the long minutes before his senses that have slowly been flickering out turn on again. He tries to drag himself back on the glade of ice from the depths; the surface is better than the bottomless sea, no matter that his hypothermia might freeze him to death on it as well. There is a wan light in the corner of his mind and he pushes forward, towards it, scrapes his palm on the sharp edge of the ice and, instead of pain, feels the thick obscurity part around him enough to see him.

Vergil stands straight a few paces behind him, a dim white beacon barely visible in the motionless storm of the darkness. He's white and pallid like shade and Dante can't make out his facial expressions, but he doesn't need to in order to understand. He's still and tense; a pale shadow warning him of the dangers of forgetting himself. What's at stake here is not something like his own health he could blithely discard.

Vergil likely dies here if he fails and cannot get them forward.

Vergil senses something is wrong, but when he turns to Dante, he looks confused, questioning. He must not get that it's a copy of what he was not that long ago, only that it's something artificial and twisted, because that's what Dante's other senses scream at him too. Their demonic instincts shriek that there's something unholy lurking, broken a million times and scraped back together only to be forced to bend over and over until only the mindless drive of a revenant remains, and in reality, it's even worse.

The Angelo is still there, blurring into the edge of the area his vision can reach. Patient, still watching him. Almost like it's smiling without moving somewhere under the helmet and Dante's so, so ridiculously glad that he can't see the mouth robbed from his memories, if it is coerced and molded into a replica of the expression he's simultaneously been treasuring and trying to wipe from his mind for the past twenty years. Having to witness its death mask on Mallet Island was bad enough (_nothing is ever bad enough_).

Vergil − he can't let Vergil know.

Because -- Because he still isn't sure what happened to him, but it's clear that it has been traumatic, even if he wanted it to happen in the first place, and that's not terribly healthy either. If it was all done to him against his will, it has to be even worse. It's bad enough a trip down the memory lane for him; he's a monster by birth but he's never been made into one like that. He doesn't know how much he remembers of being it. He doesn't know how much he could perceive as the Angelo about its body, his body. All the more reason for him to take this. “Stay back, I'll handle it,” he grits between his teeth.

Vergil doesn't put up a fight and doesn't ask for clarifications; they both know that while he's perfectly capable of being dangerous even one-handed and without his blade and sight, he also has to conserve his energy, which must already be waning since they have left Argosax's former domain, now. Even Dante is aware of that with all his unaccustomedness to how these things play out. It would be stupid to waste it on something that Dante can handle on his own. Dante won't make him relive his nightmares if he can help it; he might not be able to do that much to protect him, but this he can execute, maybe.

Dante counts on him being disquieted by his inadequate knowledge to such a degree that he won't ask him what it is that they're facing, not immediately afterwards, at least. If he can bring himself to get rid of it, then they'll be fine and Vergil will be none the wiser.

This is the Hell he has been bracing himself for the whole time, and it's found him just when he had thought he'd left it behind him already. Hubris, Dante, is your trouble once again. Hubris, Dante, will ruin kings and prosperous cities. Your hubris, Dante, will ruin him.

He's fought it thrice in corpore and a thousand times in his dreams, so in theory he knows all its moves as well as his own head − not that well but better than he's ever known Vergil −, knows the obvious, almost insulting weaknesses Vergil lacked. Battling this thing with Ebony and Ivory won't get him anywhere fast enough and while he's carrying the Vendetta which packs a lot of potential for raw damage, Rebellion is the best choice with its longer reach and demon energy. It's not a good idea to get any closer to the phantom than he has to. He'd love to blast the fucker to smithereens with a missile launcher; then again, even though it lacks Vergil's agility, it can teleport well enough to avoid the treatment. He unwillingly resigns himself to re-enacting the match down to every painful detail. At least there's no thunder to shake him up this time. Dante draws out the sword and bellows out a battle cry that resembles a hysterical laugh.

As much as the freaky helmet the Angelo donned the first time around creeped him out − the vein-like, bright lines curling around the chin and forehead; the gaps between the green armor plates that were dark enough to seem black connected by artificial muscle fibrils; the veiny, red and blue horns like a twisted imitation of a jester's headpiece, now that he thinks about it, and if that doesn't scream Mundus claiming it as his plaything to his amusement, Dante doesn't know what would −, seeing a copy of it wearing Vergil's corrupted face is a bad fucking trip. It takes the helm off without any hurry; confident. Underneath, it's dead in all the senses of the word: the blue eyes are still completely flat, the features are contorted in a stiff void of expressions, the paleness is acute enough to illuminate the air around it. It is only now that he can put into words one of the complicated feelings which he has been harboring since the two of them met in the woods: this is what he has been half expecting to see when he's searched for his face.

(_He can feel the nauseating crush reverberate through his body, a hollow voiceless sound. Shattering body, shattering face, Rebellion tearing through three corpses simultaneously, his, its, his brother's_.)

Dante goes for the first hit. He misses, the Angelo blocks. It sweeps its weapon into a counterattack instantly and he struggles to dodge. Has it gotten quicker or has he slowed down? He tries to parry a combo of blows but has to give ground; he retreats a couple of steps back and manages to shield himself from a series of summoned swords barely in time by lifting Rebellion and letting it absorb the impact. Fuck, this time he's the slow treacle competing against quicksilver.

He triggers. There's no other option, he's fucking this up so royally. His blows aren't still landing, but at least getting up close is no longer entirely suicidal. It becomes a war of attrition − he interprets hostile attacks early enough to counter them but too late to use them. Dante's supposed to be able to read its mannerism fluently by now, but now he's throwing himself to the ground to avoid a strike coming behind his back. Snarling in frustration, he gets back to chipping at its guard.

“What if it's the real Vergil you're slaying now?” his inner doubt whispers venomously gently. It's enough to break his focus for a fraction of a second and that's all the Angelo needs; he feels the glowing sword sink into him before he's realized it even had the weapon aimed at him. It's not the pain that wakes him up, it comes later; the smell of his own blood, though, is what makes him jump. The scent has been there in the stains Vergil still bears on his clothes, but it has been thinned down by the virtue of the splatters having dried and being buried in the mess of demon secretion, black bile and the smell of burning flesh. It hits him in the midriff like a mean hammer and makes him dodge before his body can make sense of the sensation of being cleaved by a huge vicious lethal broadsword. He drops to the ground from the impact belatedly; he steps to the side first and a bolt of searing pain follows soon after, much too soon. With all the adrenaline that's coursing through his system, he's supposed to carry on for a while until the shock starts to settle in and notice the injury only then.

That's not what happens at all. Dante finds himself on the floor when his legs have given out, wriggling in pain, his limbs wiggling and curling closer to his body and straightening when they get too close to the maimed area. It's not a flesh wound, that's clear − not what's the equivalent thereof to a demon like him. He howls but the sound is broken. He can't get enough air, not in, not out.

His finger twitches against the slash. The jolt of agony recurs when he forces his juddering hand to trace the wrecked edge the sword left behind. Dante takes in large gulps of air that disperses before it can reach his lungs. The wetness goes on and on from his now naked, clammy skin on his side. He hisses -- on and on past his stomach. Raw meat until it stops an inch or two from the other side. There's a large gap between the cut flesh, the upper and the lower part of his body; they hang together by the small strip of intact tissue. The blood is hot and it's everywhere. The slick texture he feels against his fingertip must be his guts. They are spilling out, but he doesn't see them, can't turn his head down, can't, can't feel his legs.

He's nearly cut into two. He doesn't know if it's him moving his limbs or if the dying nerves yank them before they still for good. He can't make them gather his gushing organs and push them back inside his body, so there he lies like a gutted fish, languishing and gulping with smashed gills.

The Angelo hovers above him like it's following a moderately interesting play from a comfortable viewing distance. It's almost curious in its observation; an intelligence there that it shouldn't be portraying. It was never dumb, it's not about that, but it was mute and geared towards one purpose only. It's only a fetish, in the end; twisted, artificial life blown into a figurine molded out of phlegm and black mucus and Dante's worst fears. Now it's like it could burst into speech any moment. Wouldn't that just be something.

The sword that has possibly killed him is swung back. Dante's not much of a threat to it as he is, on that they agree. It probably expects him to either die meekly or trying to parse himself into roughly one chunk before attacking it. He could still survive this if he was quick about it. His healing could do it if he gathered his exposed insides and closed the rift to let his hide seal and stop him from bleeding out. The thought hits him − he has the advantage now when it doesn't expect him to retaliate, when it's distracted by some disturbingly human drive it's not supposed to possess. What does it care? But it's interested to watch the show it has made him to play the starring role of to the bitter end. If he just… gathered himself, more and less literally, just enough to strike a death blow into its stomach once again and again and again butchering it --

He pants and flops his propped back to the ground, pushing the halves against each other feebly. Flesh knits together slowly. Too slow. His upper body is still tilted wrong and there's a wide cavern on his abdomen grinning and donning a necklace of blood-shiny pearls. Time's running out.

Maybe he won't do that, though. Maybe he just waits a bit longer and lets the choice get out of his hands, the decision can be outsourced (either it finishes him off or it doesn't, it's satisfied with watching him bleed to death. The more he bleeds the warmer he feels, and maybe he forgets why it would be important to hang in there. Maybe… maybe it isn't.).

It wouldn't be so bad if his fingers, icy and still reaching for his core, his heart, weren't feeling so cold.

He closes his eyes. Instead of rest, he screams out in pain. Dante's body hurls itself forward like electrocuted − the movement is quick and disorderly but deadly with the way Rebellion's considerable mass is struck against the plates covering the creature's lower body. There's a sickening crunch, the force shatters the carapace over a large area. A flash of the thing's pilfered face in his mind − a grimacing mouth, an incorporeal smile. Somehow, he sees his own mirror image echoed in its non-reflecting eyes but it's gone before he sees what he looks like. The cracks spread with smaller clicks and crackles until the expanse of the armor serving as skin is taken over by the fragmentation. It's like puzzle pieces but he's never solved a thing.

The entrance wound burns with sparking purple light. It's electricity and it's dying, spreading through the seams, not with a rattle but a burst of laser-bright rays of tightly caged power set free. It gets brighter and brighter until the creature erupts in a flash of lightning. When the garishly brilliant radiance dies down and fades from his retinas, it's not there anymore. It's all over in an instant.

This time around, nothing is left behind.

It is only at this point that his brain registers what has been ringing in his ears in the background and running as a current through his mangled flesh. Blending into the sound of the shell fracturing, Vergil's voice cries out in repeat. “Dante, answer to me!” But, brother dear, he doesn't even know what the question is.

(_And Cain said to Abel, his brother: “Let_ _us go to the field.”_

_ Vergil, let's go to the lake!)_

Then he doesn't think of anything. He hurks and lumps forward, tries to slip and fit the slippery edges together with lame fingers.

There's no blood this time. There's no blood, there wasn't any blood, there was a half-dried pool of blood but no body, he smells his blood distantly but there's no blood.

There's a metric fuckton of blood.

It's his own.

It's never his.

(_The voice of your brother's blood calls for me from the soil.)_

It's wet and lukewarm in the haze. The pain shooting up in him somewhere is cold and sharp and dry in contrast. Vergil curses and suddenly he recognizes a finger inside his belly. It's bad but it gets worse when it's torn away. He hears himself scream, doesn't feel it, doesn't know when he stops, only that it has ended when the hole in his midriff has been filled with brand new tissue.

Vergil doesn't eat him this time either, he wonders.

Vergil's hands are still on him when he really comes to. Pressing against the sides of his hips. Naked on his bare skin. Imagery from his dirty filthy dreams.

In order to clear his vision Dante blinks his eyes. Doesn't work as well as expected since the area is still as dark as before. He's leaning on his elbows on the ground and his blind brother is sitting between his legs and holding his pelvis between his palms (... palm?), seeing nothing, not breathing. When it gets down to it, he's more or less exactly as alive or not-alive as the thing was. Every cell in his body wants to respond to the touch on his flesh and yet − how can he be sure it's him in there, that it's him he has partly resurrected by partly killing the body which resembles his lost Lenore only in part?

This is him, at his last limit. They have to get to Yamato before something pushes him over it, plain and simple.

He doesn't want to get up; it'd be easier to burrow into the ground and abandon the world, retreat into his skeleton. Simpler − he needs something to be simple, once in his life. The steam is running out, his gears are jamming. He has to look inside the box to see if Vergil has been gassed to death, can't stand this uncertainty between dead and alive, lost to be gone, rinse and wring and repeat.

If he's dead, Dante will go back to his earlier non-existence, in all likelihood a little less of a person and little more than a high-strung, quivering bow that's aimed at Mundus who will come, who has to come, to him, before he can be let go or break from the tension. If he's been dead all along and this is only a sequel, he'll kill it, him, the imposter, and pay penance for the memories he has stolen in this lifeless land until he's broke.

If they fail and he genuinely departs him for one last time, he'll finally, finally bury him and prays for closure he won't get until Mundus delivers him from this. If it's him alive and surviving, living long enough to run away, then he has to find happiness in the knowledge that he's somewhere out there, existing on the same plane of reality with him. They can share the same level of existence again, Dante can deal with that, can't ask more than that, has no right to ask even that much. He can't afford to want that, but if it happens, he'll have to mangle his body until it finds a shape that can subsist on that knowledge, endure it.

He wants to believe there's no way for him to know the difference and that it's not his subconscious trying to mislead him in order to make what it knows to be a straw man into his own private sex doll. If he had built a man out of an old broom, a rusty bucket and a cucumber and called it his brother in between bottles, he's not sure if he could tell it apart from him anymore, no matter how sober. He could be fulfilling his hopes by dragging along a blow-up toy, Mundus' and his; this isn't what he wanted, and while it could be what he deserves, Vergil hasn't earned a desecration. Now it's no longer about him dying once or thrice or in the past or in some undeterminable point of time in the future: Vergil, in a way, is dying constantly to him because there's no way to tell at any moment. Dear Schrödinger, give Dante the gas.

Vergil offers him a hand. The hand, it's a singular thing now. An odd glove. When Dante hauls himself up with his help, he doesn't know which one of them shakes more. His twin doesn't ask him any questions even when the air reeks of Dante's blood − maybe that's exactly why he doesn't. It's, after all, obvious that things didn't go according to plan. Vergil's got blood on his hands to prove that. Dante almost slips in the pool of his own fluids when they walk forward, the liquid standing out in an ocean of darker black in the middle of the dimness. His lungs constrict painfully when he draws in deep breaths, but they work, his arteries circulate the oxygen to every cell in his frame.

For a moment, he stares at the spot where he last saw the fallen angel fall to try and focus. No devil arm on this occasion, either. Would Vergil do that − would he want a part of him to remain, no matter how small? There are too many renditions of Vergil in his mind and none of them are true to him. They've all claimed his face, some in a form more mutated than the others, just like Dante has with his endless misshapen memoirs of him.

He's so afraid.

He doesn't let go of Vergil, who seems to be shaken enough that he doesn't protest when he staggers forward unsteadily and tows him with him. The darkness surrounding their path is unchanged until it isn't − after a while, he sees a flicker of white light that appears above the level of his head and glides horizontally to the side in a spirit level line, then down, to the left and up again, drawing the outline of the backside of a door. His skin tingles with sorcery and apprehension when they get to it, and the fear grips his neck in a vice.

He keeps holding Vergil but can't prevent him from severing his hand if that's what it takes for him to get free, if he wants to. But he can't let him pass through the door alone, he can't wait for him to follow him, so he pulls him to his side and pushes the door open, squishing Vergil's hand hard enough to break bone that's not there and halt circulation that's no longer functioning. He steps into Fortuna and hopes Vergil will follow.

Hopefully his last hand is precious enough to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some Bible quotes I translated from Vulgata, the Latin version of the Good Book, hanging around at the end (Genesis 4,9−15).
> 
> Today's Gratuitous Latin Poem, on the other hand, is written by Sextus Propetius (2,26b or 2,26c depending on the edition). Propertius' elegies are predominantly love-themed, so I don't think Dante heard that many of his works in his childhood. The original version is about an “illa”, she, but Vergil uses the masculine form “ille”, he. Here's an artless translation:
> 
> \-- if he'll never be absent from my eyes  
Jove himself may set this ship of ours on fire.  
at any rate, our naked bodies will be hurled together to the same sea coasts.  
let the waves carry me away as long as the ground protects you. --
> 
> Some author rambling about this series here: I got excited about writing a parallel piece about Vergil to mirror this one some time ago − I like the symmetry of making Dante face his weaknesses in Hell (Vergil's domain, kind of) and doing the same thing to Vergil with human world and different points in Dante's life. So, I don't know, that might be something that happens in the future.


	11. xi. And the Door Loves the Threshold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Fortuna (kind of)! 
> 
> I know I said this would be short. I tried. Dante decided to have a small mental breakdown or two and I'm weak, so it's almost 10K again. Hello, 70 000, we'll meet soon.

There's a door.

Déjà vu. Dante has been here before. By this stage, he'd really like to have the choice between having new and excruciating methods of torture tested on him or going through certain unforgettable experiences he's already had again, maybe with minute variation in inconsequential details to spice things up a bit. No dice. Now it appears to be the time for some reruns, which means his own grand role in the events unfolding is lying back on his shitty armchair and thinking of England and why his remote is always missing. Must've burned down with _Devil Never Cry_. Kicking back at the screen never helps at changing the channel he's force fed with (the images from that one film where a woman has her eye cut into two with a razorblade aren't very uplifting after Vergil lost his, so that must be why he, a masochist, is thinking of them at all), so maybe it's time to retreat into his beloved strategy of staying technically alive: going through the motions. Good riddance to the possibility of taking his picks − not like he ever used it much, to be honest.

There's a door and he's not happy about it even when it's quite likely there are no Angelos behind this particular one. He doesn't want to experience new things, things he already has pulled his carcass through. In essence, a gate is a disruption, a transition, a promise of change, and he's not sure he'd be able to handle even an even road anymore. Yeah, the gate looks different than the one leading to the latest clusterfuck, but he still has a bad feeling about it anyhow, especially when he senses a fuckload of small demons scuttling on the other side.

(_There is always something on the other side until there isn't, when he's left to stare at an empty looking glass that's become only a glass, a mirror without its twin image. Nonfunctional. He doesn't know if he's being literal or figurative or both anymore_. _Pathetic either way._)

There's nothing magical about these gates, they are all man-made. Sturdy white wood with no unnecessary decorations, stably surrounded by a wall of cut bleached stone in large pieces, too regular and unweathered to be that old. Walls running around cities tend to be ancient but these aren't − they date back a generation at most, which could make someone who exhibits healthy curiosity at things to question their purpose. After all, what reason would a sleepy present-day town inhabited by the religious, god-fearing sort have for building fortresses? More to the point; is the goal to keep something out or in? How fortunate he's only trying to postpone the inevitable with the narrating, by making these inane observations, instead of actually being invested in solving any riddles. Dante doesn't have to find it out at all. Not his business. He silences the whispers of the logical part of his mind that claim it could involve him if he has to enter the city and run into the causa during this quest. He burns most bridges before he must cross them. It's mostly effective.

So. He paid for their ride in literal blood and sweat, the tears he's not sure about. In return, the portal has taken him to the pomerium of Fortuna. By and large, it's all going according to plan. Somewhere within these walls is Yamato (maybe) and they're going to get her (possibly) and Vergil's going to fix himself and consequently most of Dante, too (unlikely, statistically improbable). Now there's just the matter of getting there and her and also getting the confirmation that his brother has actually stumbled after him to the same plane of existence. Should be nothing after the jolly little reunion with his personal Lucifer incarnate. A cakewalk, piece of cake, piece of piss.

Dante takes a deep breath.

Traveling from one realm to another has disorientated him enough that at first he can't tell if the hand in his is still attached to its jarringly careless owner. It's pretty much weightless anyway due to the lack of bones, making it difficult to tell, and Vergil hasn't felt the need to grip him as forcefully as he does himself: for all he knows, it could be severed above the wrist and left hanging like the piece of leather he had lovingly customized ten long years ago. A hot minute. Wouldn't it be great if it in fact was chopped off, though; he could add the loose fist that's missing its pair to his collection of the lonely glove and the accompanying scar grazing and disfiguring only his left palm. Things imbalanced. Trying to fit an amputated paw into a mitten meant for a different hand is surely a metaphor for some sorry aspect of his life. For fuck's sake: he's trying to insert a rounded block A into a square hole B all the time, first demurely and eventually with violence, and wonders why he's failing the test so spectacularly. The symmetry they've always had but in which he tried to find faults with overactive determination is gone, seemingly permanently. Jesus, why isn't he happy then?

The myths only prohibit turning one's head while getting out of Hell. The same principle, he suspects, applies to the Bible, which seems appropriate to consider in this promised land of His children. As a kid, Dante wasn't very impressed by the Good Book, but Vergil seemed to derive some weird amusement from the usage of Latin in it, so there was a lot of sermons back in the day. He read everything out loud with this precocious seriousness, but somehow Dante suspected that underneath it was a layer of mirth he hid efficiently, already a pro at the clandestine. Presently, there's a faint recollection of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the promised land of incestuous homosexuals, rattling around in his head. Apparently, whatever depravity they were up to was enough to turn any escapees looking back into pillars of salt. He wonders. Sometimes, when his memories are even more of a net of wispy fog than normally, more immaterial than usual, when they run through the fingers which he has wrapped around himself and which fail to cut his release loose, he finds his body in front of a mirror. When he slicks his too long hair back and looks himself in the eye, for a moment he's not inside it. For a moment, fleeting and short-lived and acrid and saline sweet, there's only Vergil, skin contact and familiar heat that freezes as much as it burns. He wonders; taking in the after, his own seed cooling on his palm, a dead name throbbing on his hard palate but never articulated, the obscene flush of his skin and lipstick-bright lips. The naked honesty. A punishment: _this is you at your core. Observe._ With whatever they were up to in the condemned twin cities, would he stand out in the crowd with his vices out in the open like that? Is this graven image of Vergil, a brittle column of splintering glass, his doing in this way too?

This, though, is definitely your plain old human world. He's not leaving, he's left. Dante's abruptly aware of being hit by a wave of exhaustion that covers up any soreness that might still be left from his earlier disembowelment − no extra healing here besides his inherent remedial DNA, which must be the only thing keeping him on his feet right now. Like he's been to hell and back, hah. If he didn't concentrate, he'd probably fall from his feet face first into the cobblestone path that welcomes any travelers and straggles to Fortuna. Hard to motivate himself not to. There'd be no getting up soon from that; the ice filling his bones has been transmutated into some thick alloy that makes them heavier than ever. “Osmium is the densest of metals,” his brain cheerfully pipes up and he thanks it for this most salient piece of information. It feels more out of control than usual. Awesome.

No matter how he feels about it personally, this sure isn't Hell anymore. The air he's been ingesting and taking for granted all his life is suddenly thinner, as if he's missing half his red blood cells. His skin peeking from under the shreds of his coat feels intact but it's tight and stretching like it doesn't quite fit over his bones. It appears that Vergil did a fairly good job on putting the halves together even guided merely by the hand feel since no intestines are playing peekaboo. Dante lets his other hand brush against the spot that marked the end of the line cut into his stomach. Smooth and in one piece. Here's a tired notion: outwardly this corpse of his is doing just fine, but who knows what's going on under the hide. Could be said about many other things too. If the banshee somehow poisoned him, if he's now being filled with putrefying tissue as well, they can take turns in throwing stuff up if and when Vergil's attacks make a dearly awaited comeback, a neat opportunity for sibling bonding. If he's still here at that time to hold Dante's hair back.

Speaking of the devil. He's got to face things sooner or later. Apprehensive but in the end even more distressed by the uncertainty, he turns.

While he's hit in the face with the brick-like force of witnessing Vergil in all his deteriorating glory in natural lighting − if possible, his waxy complexion is worse still and the cracks seem more severe in softer daylight −, he can't hold back the alien relief flooding his expression and lungs. He lets go of his hand in his surprise; it's cold and his own body heat, burning a lot warmer than your plain vanilla human's, does nothing to raise the temperature despite his best attempts (what good is his body if it can't do a simple thing like that?). The last time he felt it, his warmth, well -- he didn't, most likely, it was probably just his wishful thinking drowned by the massive fucking meltdown he was undergoing. Since his mind is convinced it's his favorite memory of all time, he braces himself for the inevitable flashback that must come now that he's stumbled upon the path to that particular memory lane. And sure enough, here it is, his regularly administered dose of torment, fucking fantasti-- _His earlier words have failed to convey his message, the desperation spilling out in a different awful form than the one scalding his insides. He tries to communicate that Vergil will never ever become like their father because he's better, because he has his humanity no matter how much he might despise it. He wants, overwhelmingly, to get it through his skull that they are twins, the sons of Sparda, shared blood and trauma and destiny, the last dredges of the soul their father had had to make him less of a monster and more of a demon that did save a lot of humans but also fucked as many things up and created them and abandoned them to their own devices when they needed someone, their Frankenstein, to make sense of who and what they ultimately are. That whatever he was and is planning he shouldn_'_t_ _carry out, because there is no other way for them to be than be together, that he believes in this so deeply he'll stop at almost nothing to make him see that. But -- Dante is nineteen and brash and angry and afraid, terrified beyond death, so he fumbles with his speech and thereby they clash blades once again. He likes to blame dear old Dad for giving him life, a life he never chose, but it's_ _on him, it's all him, he later knows._

_His frustration at the fighting and Vergil_'s_ failure to catch his meaning twist his words again − there is something off about him, and while it is stupid considering that he wants to take him out so he can calm down a bit and they can talk things over, he wants to goad him into fucking _trying, _because he can do better than this against him. It's_ _Vergil, his equal_. _But Vergil gets down and gets up with a grunt and this is the one single moment in the series of mistakes that make up Dante's life that he regrets and speculates about and tortures himself the most with. “The portal to the human world is closing, Dante,” he tells him and Dante −− he flat out fails to notice his weird tone. In the coming years, he replays these seconds again and again and again and never quite shakes the feeling that it's him offering a ceasefire, an olive branch of sorts, and he, fuck, he _**does not get it**. _Instead, he's caught up in his panicking desire to knock him out for a minute and lets out the words he regrets more than anything, that he'd stop him even if it meant killing him. They come out so wrong, echo, that's not what he means, but it's the only way he thinks he'll listen to him because appealing to their bond didn't work out; Vergil will want to protect his own life even if them being brothers means nothing at all to him, so there, a threat which he begins to bemoan as soon as he catches himself shouting it. Afterwards, he's always accompanied by the brutal certainty that things would have played out differently for them, had he not said that._

_He does say it and Vergil does hear it, chooses the absolutely fucking wrong instance to listen to him. There's a last flicker of something on his face, the shadow of a feeling, before it closes off for good. They dash towards each other arms raised and he thinks this is it, now he'll stun him even if he's bothered by the fact that most of his brother's battling spirit has been missing the whole confrontation, and when he comes to, they'll finally have an honest, real talk. Of course, that's not what happens at all: Vergil rushes at him and swings the Force Edge so high above Dante's head that he'd have to be at least one and half times his height for it to even graze him. Rebellion, though, is made to meet its target and cuts deep into Vergil's flesh, the force belying his careless despair − Vergil's fragrant blood sprays out in a large arch, a large splash when it hits the running water under their feet and something's wrong. Something's wrong and he's hit by a confusion that paralyzes him like the blow of a blade that never comes and he doesn't turn, why doesn't he turn to face him when he knows he_'_s cut him open and he's bleeding profusely; time freezes for a couple of breaths until Vergil groans in pain. Something's wrong and Vergil pants and spits out a line and only now does Dante hurry to him and Vergil stumbles and his neck is met with the tip of Yamato when he gets to him, entirely too late. He's spent a lion's share_ _of his life rewinding the following events and trying to avoid rewinding them and his conclusion is that at this point it's all useless, everything irrevocably ruined spoiled shattered. Vergil stands and hunches his back against the chasm and talks. Distracts him. Takes a step back until his heel is on the very edge of the cliff, jaw set, hard eyes. Concealed. Dante looks at him speaking, looks at his lovely terrible mouth form the word “home”, his last word, looks and realizes and sees him fall back at the syllable, both his feet now over the edge. Dante reaches out immediately, slow, before the message truly reaches him but still so very late, having lost the game for good, having lost him several moments earlier. Vergil's mouth forms a resolute line when he takes the sight of Dante in, he forms a final horizontal wall between them with the katana, he blocks him and kisses him goodbye with the stinging cut he engraves on his left palm, precise even in his death, he falls._

_The Force Edge is left behind, sticking out from the ground. Dante picks it up, thinks he feels his fading warmth against his skin for one last time. It doesn_'_t belong to him but he takes it anyway, greedy._

His left hand is now as empty as it was, back then: no sword and no hand to keep holding onto. Just the cut and the phantom pain. Dante's no expert on the way half demon bodies operate and there's exactly zero cells in his that want to unpack any of his unprocessed feelings, but it doesn't take much to figure out his skin keeps bearing the scar because the actual wound has never healed. It's still up for question if the wreck in front of him is his sibling and how much he remembers of his life, if this would be significant enough for him to recall in any case, but there's still a part of him that wants to lay his palm and himself open in front of him. It'll be the last part of him to die.

No use, though: maybe-Vergil's sockets are just as empty in Fortuna as they were in the underworld. At least he can now tell that the scene of the tragedy that ultimately caused him to lose the eyes was just limbo, having just been to the actual Hades − the cliff was right above a true hellmouth alright. If that knowledge is useful in any way remains to be seen.

But − he came after him today.

“Vergil,” he begins in order to express how much of something it is to have him follow him, eyes or no eyes, memories or no memories. It's something indeed; good or bad or worse he doesn't know, but it chokes him and scalds him and he's resonating with it, his body singing with the intensity. It feels like something Vergil should know.

He interrupts him before his ravings have the chance to find a tangible shape, though. “I must get to Yamato,” he says in a hollow voice. Dante thinks some unverbalizable emotion, a malignant tumor, in his chest deflates. He smiles to have something to do. It hurts.

Is it Dante he feels the need to remind of the fact or himself, in any case? Here he goes, the umpteenth disquieting thought of the hour: Vergil could well be forgetting brand new things, too. Whether he's aware of everything that has transpired between them, or not-them, is one thing − in the grand scheme of things trivial, he reminds himself −, but losing such resent time would make a mess even Father's powers and weapons couldn't solve.

Yamato, he gets all of a sudden. Yamato will know if it's him, she'll recognize her other half. She's too faithful to let him down like that (like this). While Dante has also been left behind by Sparda and is capable in combat, he is a poor replacement for her in any respect. Fitting; after all, he's pretty sure she's the only one Vergil has ever truly connected with, who has understood him, whom he has loved. Reciprocal love does exist, sometimes. It'll save him.

So now they only have to make it quick enough that Vergil doesn't forget what he's supposed to do with her and Dante will also get his answer. Plain sailing, really.

“Well. You told me you know where she's being kept? In the city?

Vergil nods. Dante should really stop forming his questions into forms that accept mere yesses and nos as valid currency. “How, uhh, accurately can you tell her location?” A general hunch won't help much with a town of this size. By the look of things, it's relatively small for a city, sure, but rummaging through every building from roof to cellar doesn't sound like something that brings them the results they need when they need them. Then there's the matter of who the idiots guarding her are. He's not particularly keen on asking that after disposing of the latest watchdog they've had the pleasure to run into -- he means, it can't be worse than it was just some minutes ago if it's just humans, yeah? And still there's this gnawing premonition when he thinks about it. Better not to do that.

“Accurately enough.” It's the blind leading the blind, then. Is what it's got to be.

Dante takes the surrounding world in disinterestedly, more out of a distant sense of obligation than any genuine human feelings he honestly doesn't think he's capable of now of all times, if he ever was in the first place. He looks to the left, then up. Seeing a living sky for the first time in ages feels like something that's supposed to make him experience an emotion he doesn't have. The story of his life. It's vivid blue and fluffy white of cheery little clouds skipping around above the two them and the dissonance between that and the reality of their situation is dizzying. Out in the distance, there's a small cluster of rustic buildings. Signs of actual life. Just when he had thought there was the slightest bit of sense in this mess, he looks to the right.

A slap in the face. He almost senses the ghost of his nose splinter and break and the blood hit his cheeks.

He's losing it. Must be.

“What the fuck.”

Vergil doesn't reply.

“What the fuck?” It's a question, now.

Vergil swallows the thing he's visibly this close to saying. “What?” he asks instead, not one to be able to stand a situation in which someone else knows more than he does. Luckily, Dante's overjoyed to share.

“The bike, _what the fuck_. We left it behind in Hell, I know that for sure. Motherfucking -- tell me I'm seeing things.” His explanation falls flat but he has a good excuse; the motorcycle from Hell, the hell-on-wheels − fucking hell − is leaning against the city wall on their right. If it was a normal devil arm and he could sense it, Dante gets the impression he'd be hearing it laugh at him right about now. The black shines in sunlight brighter than it did down under, which emphasizes the deep purple undercurrent of the paint job. At this point the frame could be decorated with pink glitter and stickers of kittens and Dante would nevertheless find it intimidating. The vanishing trick isn't that shocking in itself when there's an endless multitude of things parading around him that he can get his fix of anxiety from, but the whole spectacle upsets everything he's ever known to be true about arms and sets it on fire out of spite and he doesn't need that.

Vergil stands in place silent for some time. “You are not,” he replies eventually. Nice to have it confirmed by his brother the arm whisperer, his canary in coal mines, even if his diagnostic methods are a little unsettling. He could at least pretend to use his human senses, just for Dante's sake, for his peace of mind.

Dante stomps his way to the repeat offender and stares at it challengingly. It doesn't budge, just falls to the side when he kicks it more viciously than intended. There's a sudden bubble of violence inside him and he has to take it out on something; it's winding in a tight tight coil and he's trembling with the tension, the desperation to act. It's apparently a spanking new Vergil thing to kill and maim worthless enemies by teeth and nail − his anguish gets the impulse now, but the fact that there's still nothing to explain why _Vergil _would do that only spurs him on, bafflement stirring the flames like gasoline. He needs to hurt something and if he hurts himself in the process, all the better. 

(He won't; Vergil needs someone and as far as he knows he's the only thing he has.)

It's stupid to have been hoping to get to fight him one last time for ten years when it's, in the end, what killed him. He knows, he knows, he knows and he wants and he can't. Not just because it's him only maybe and because of him decaying rapidly while he's ruminating on this − it's because he doesn't think he could do it, battle him, without Vergil shedding the ugly out of him like his blood, which might taint his skin momentarily. Dante's feelings, on the other hand, would make a permanent stain, like a tattoo if the colors wouldn't dissipate from their hypodermic flesh once the needle is set down. He's going to bleed all over him if he ever sees him wield Yamato again. Putting a cap on his agitations has never been his strong suit or even a remote talent of his and sharing a dance with him on top of the sky-scraping tower was enough: now the pressure has been gathering forever and ever under the flimsy lid, doesn't take much for it to pop off.

Fuck, he hates this piece of shit. Kick. Confusion has every potential to turn things even sourer. Kick. He hears a bone make a nasty click. Doesn't know which leg it is. Kick. The bike takes it calmly. Kick, kick, kick. Fuck it.

“This isn't normal. Nothing can travel between the realms without a portal, right? It shouldn't be able to do that, should it?” he manages when he notices his boot is filling with liquid, warm like a woolen sock.

Vergil looks uncomfortable.

“No,” he says.

Dante paces a line between the arm and the gate. It doesn't make his perturbation die down any.

“Alright, well, fuck. What are we gonna do with it? Can't just leave it here, can we?

He predicts Vergil's monosyllabic answer before he pronounces it. “No.”

“But is it safe to ride? Don't fucking think so.”

“Considering the circumstances, walking is not a safe choice.”

“Gotta make haste, huh? Yeah, I get it. We can't prance around in the city smelling like this, though.” Every demon within a not-a-mile's-but-some-other-measure-such-feeble-creatures-can-sense radius is going to attack them, and they don't have the time to sweep every particle of dust from their way. The only strength these bedbugs have is in numbers. That they've got: there's a lot of them, Dante can sense it even from here, hundreds of minute pinpricks poking his skin from the inside. Why there would be a horde of minor demons in a place like Fortuna he'll undoubtedly find out shortly. He doesn't recognize this brand of devil exactly, but it doesn't matter. They're weak, that's crystal clear, and normally he wouldn't grant them a second thought; now, however, making quick progress is going to be hell with them crawling all over the place and soon them. If there are still any humans left in the area, Vergil's unsettling tar tears, defunct eye sockets and the massive amount of gore on them might make the pious folks run for pitchforks and lynching rope and the like as well. There's no need to beg for additional trouble, enough of it will find them anyway.

“Okay, come on. Let's get the worst of it off, at least. I'll find us a bathroom.”

“Do be quick about it. There is not much time,” Vergil says and enhances this by pulling off a finger. Well, that's a rather dramatic way to put it into words. Patently untrue, too: kind of difficult to achieve that feat with only one hand to break and to dismember with. Anyhow, the withered digit falls of when Vergil waves his hand in the smallest of dismissive arches. No snap or anything, no contact, it just drops. This is the sort of thing that should be accompanied with time slowing down into a cinematic slo-mo but isn't. Instead, the pinky little finger meets cobblestone and crumbles into colorless dust upon the impact before Dante actually gets what's happening. There is apparently nothing inside, no hint of purple or black to be seen. Dante stares and considers laughing because he's embarrassed himself enough in front of him by crying already. Vergil raises the hand in front of his face and turns it around wonderingly. As if realizing it makes zero sense but noting that it's too late to abort the motion, he keeps at it until Dante catches his wrist and gets him on the seat. They sure make a sorry pair. “A match made in Hell,” his mind jeers at him. He's losing it.

So now he's not bursting at the seams, he's just literally crumbling down.

(_Will he fill an urn this time_?)

“Remember what you said about detaching your limbs back there?” Dante can't help saying with a tight voice while fiddling with starting the engine he still doesn't trust with Vergil even when he could most likely throw it quite far. It'd only come back. Vergil's organs likely won't.

“Yes,” Vergil hiccups. He doesn't elaborate when they get moving towards the line of houses Dante can spot in the horizon, nestled between some evergreens he can't be arsed to name. Weird to be surrounded by trees other than birches.

It's a blessedly short ride. He's still clutching the grip as if he could thus strangle both the chopper and his own angst. Vergil seems to sense his mood. It could help that he's cursing; his foot is still parsing itself. “Owing to Rebellion, the corruption has evanesced. There is… very little in the way of filling the empty space.” Tasting his words and weighing their scions, he hops off when Dante parks them in the middle of someone's neatly kept lawn sloppily and adds: “It is spreading.” He manages to flounder to the door confidently and without tripping on grass or flowers or the stairs of the porch before Dante finds the remaining bits of his wherewithal to go after him.

Hope nobody's home today. All the windows he sees while he eyes the buildings are dark. Feels like he's surrounded by spiders − too many vacant stares aimed at him after the desolateness of the netherworld. Suddenly difficult to watch his six, theirs.

No demons here, at least.

Vergil, still very much bare-footed, steps on the welcome home rug and halts. Dante mistakes it for him curling his toes on the soft surface − it would be a weird move for him, but he's got to cut some slack for anyone who's traveled across fields of brimstone and escaped from the purgatory with no shoes −, but in reality he merely stops to consider something before stepping off the carpet and kicking it to the side. By bending down and sweeping the planking in front of him he procures them a key. Dante says nothing to implicate he was this close to just bashing the thing in with his head. Yeah: humans are predictable and he along them.

What's a little breaking and entering in the big picture they've been painting with each other's blood and the blood of outsiders? Least the lucky people living here get to keep their hinges and stuff.

Vergil drops the key on his palm and allows him to open the lock. Dante does it mechanically, listening to the clicks and trying to shake the moment off. He might have imagined opening a door to his brother a thousand times, but it's never de facto happened. Thus − it shouldn't feel like this, like there's too much distance between them even when this is the closest they've stood even somewhat voluntarily in a long while. Dante can't miss being pressed against the door by the touch of lips that haven't kissed him, but the weight of his mouth sits heavily on the skin of his wrists, on the nape of his neck. He's losing it and he's never had him, he reiterates his mantra when he steps over the threshold.

There's a small corridor. Pictures of dead relatives and martyrs on the walls. His eyes twitch but he ignores it. There's a likewise small kitchen slash dining room to the right. A counter, a dinner table, chairs, a loveseat. He's too tired to take in further details, but nothing's out of the ordinary. And yet it's so alien. He doesn't think he fits into this world anymore. An eternal limbo for him it is.

Vergil walks into the kitchen in his tow and stops when his thigh is met with the corner of the table. He maps the surface of it with his palm and hoists himself up on the surface to sit on the edge. Aiming his head at Dante and not-staring mutely, it's almost like he could be swinging his legs in expectation, except he's Vergil and looks so tired that he could nod off any moment and drop to the linoleum. His once ramrod-straight posture is hunched beyond all recognition, like his nonexistent spine is collapsing inwards. Dante raises his palms to signal his submission uselessly once again and retreats into the bathroom that's conveniently located next to the dining area. He doesn't feel anything moving in the bedroom either. He'd call it a stroke of luck if he didn't half believe it to be some sort of snare. Doesn't look like the residents have fled unexpectedly or anything so no explanation to why it's so quiet.

The washing room is, surprise surprise, small but roomy enough to fit in a basic bath tub. There's a line of vibrantly colored bottles sitting on the sides; azure blue, pink, bright venom green, orange, yellow with small, clear pearls of what appears to be plastic. Judging by the design, the first two are his and hers; there's some trite masculine shit about eviscerating everything dirty and bad-smelling with the cool arctic breeze of Antarctica printed on the blue one with shades of black, grey and white, while the red one has a squiggly font and roses adorning the label. They've got kids, too: there's a dinosaur and sheep and bunnies pictured on the others. Dante snatches the only nondescript soap container he detects, but it turns out to be thin foot lotion. Why is this so hard. He grabs the pink one robotically and squeezes a generous dollop of it on the bottom of the pool before he realizes he should maybe plug it. He smells flowers but not roses. False advertising.

He turns the faucet on and lets the water fill the basin. He doesn't dwell on how strange it is that it's not the other way around, that it's him drawing Vergil a bath.

While the water is at it, he invades the bedroom to look for a change of clothes. None of the details of the furniture or the decorating in general register, save for the wardrobe with crooked doors. He stands in front of it and looks through the gap running the middle almost expecting to see his younger self cowering behind the flimsy bent pieces of timber. Doesn't look much of a shelter from the outside, either. The smell of flowery laundry detergent is mixed into burning wood and blonde hair when he combs through the piles of clothing, the breath and sigh and hum of the fire in his ears. He grabs a neatly folded square of salmon silk without thinking of anything at all. The dress is too big to be that of their slender mother and the shade and plainness don't fit his discolored childhood memories. When he rubs his thumb against it, he expects his finger to be stained with ash.

Sorry for disobeying and disappointing, Mom. He never forgot the past, never started a new life, never became a man. Feels like he never got out of the cupboard. When he has no idea how to be himself with any success, how could he ever become someone else?

He shoves the gown to the back of the closet and his mind and plucks the first two tops from the pile. Very plain and forgettable, sturdy coarse fabric. There are pants made of the same material. Why not. Why them, why not something else. Why. He shoves the doors closed and lets his past burn.

He finds his future aflame in the shape of Vergil, slumped to the side on the tabletop. The hair he tried to tidy up earlier has fanned out into a veil; it's the first thing he catalogues since he can't see his face from this direction. The way the light catches it, it is more the color of pale white gold than cool, cold silver. Dante's clumsy fingers swipe it to the side and stop just short of touching the sealed lids he for some reason anticipated to be open, revealing glazed eyes. The otherwise picture perfect still life of death is only ruined by Vergil's four remaining fingers spinning lazily around a small dark sphere. It pulses with black and purple glow in a rhythm that distinctly imitates a heartbeat while it levitates in air. Ahh, Dante had completely forgotten about that subplot. Can't focus on it now, either, not with Vergil like this. Is it him sleeping or having an episode and which is worse?

“Vergil,” he urges and pretends to be surprised at the absence of a response. He decides to try and shake him. The stillness shatters the moment his fingertips touch him: Vergil jolts and his mouth flies open into a silent scream, not even air comes out. Dante drops his hands and notices he's missed the orb disappearing.

“Vergil? … The bath is ready,” he says, which is not at all what he wants to say. Vergil groans − the sound is a shiver in Dante's stomach, no matter how choked and spent it is − and zips his lips. When Dante taps his hand, he opens his palm and lets Dante pull him up.

Okay. They're on a budget here and Vergil seems incapable of taking a quick bath: Dante was gone for just a few minutes at most. It's too implausible that the cat nap would've happened voluntarily − he doesn't trust the foreign surroundings he can't even evaluate with his very own eyes that much and sure as hell still doesn't place his trust in Dante. Exactly the same shit as it was back in the clearing, only his stunt with Rebellion was supposed to end this and it didn't. As much as it seems like a recipe for a notably great disaster, giving him a hand comes across as the sensible choice. Sensible. Words like that really lose their meaning when undressing his proud brother more or less forcibly becomes something that can be defined by such terms, however loosely. Happily, he's very familiar with things losing their meanings. Dante will make do, no matter what it'll cost him personally.

He slips his arm under his hip and lifts him upright with his other hand on his scrawny shoulder. It tells a lot about the depth of his powerlessness that he doesn't protest when Dante picks him up for a reenactment of their bridal walk in Hell, just becomes a dejected puddle of somewhat solid matter. He never wanted his impression of him being too slippery to catch become almost flesh and non-blood.

These thoughts feel dirtier than usual in this house of the good Lord. The icon on the wall seems to growl when walks the aisle past it. All this holiness probably contributes to their fatigue. Wish Vergil would spout out a cryptic Bible quote he could puzzle over for a while, turn down the volume of his own head.

Distrusting his current ability to balance himself on the edge of the tub, Dante sets him down on the toilet seat. Vergil shifts and straightens his back enough that his position can be called a sitting one. Next Vergil takes his hand to untie the knot on his left shoulder, the one holding his clothing in place and not the ones keeping his shirt wrapped around the ghost of his slain arm. He freezes when Dante presses his fingers on the back of his hand in a manner he hopes is gentle. He clenches his jaw but puts the hand down and lets Dante unveil him. The well-known tick doesn't fit his latest face; the gesture looks too big on a canvas that's struggling to accommodate the width of his once full mouth. Could be mistaken for a small convulsion. Tough to look at.

He's careful about staring resolutely at the wall behind Vergil's back while he works on the bigger ties. Ceramic tiles, faded muted sun-burnt okra. It's still an assault on his senses that have lately been dulled by the lack of colors. White sand, black sky, the blue of his eyes killed eons ago already. The seams are grinning and missing grout here and there, like a kid losing his milk teeth, and donning a belt of little black spots of mold. He can't escape the rot. Maybe it's a part of him, now, maybe he a part of it. Fuck if things aren't getting real depressing once again.

Dante extricates Vergil from the clutches of the dirtied fabric quickly and machine like. His surprise at not shaking mostly covers any uncomfortable sensations he might be getting. Maybe his body knows it's supposed to conserve his waning energy and has started to strip off some unnecessities, too; there's plenty of inspiration to be had from Vergil in that respect. He wonders when it will get the hint and turn off his brain − of all the redundancies, it's the one he dislikes the most. For the millionth time he thinks Mundus chose the wrong twin to angelofy. It would have suited him well, the apparent brainlessness, and the chances are neither of them would be here like this if it was zombified Dante stalking the desolate yards and corridors of the island. Vergil, right as rain, free of devil-made defects, _free_, wouldn't have needed three rounds to do away with any pesky intruders. Dante could live with most of the universes where he ends up dead himself.

Again, there's precisely nothing sexual about stripping him naked, which pretty much only underlines the problem. There's not much of him left to objectify even for someone like him who could get properly hot and bothered by the Victorian indecency of his brother. A slender wrist with sharp bones and bright veins camouflaging the thrilling strength twined in his sinews; the strip of skin below his neck revealed when Rebellion cuts into his scarf; immaculate teeth biting into his lip in a rare show of frustration. Now, it's dead and he doesn't know if he misses it.

Dante tells himself he avoids looking at him to preserve his decorum. All the knots are open and he tugs the tattered rag off; Vergil stands up helpfully but doesn't move towards the tub. Dante feels a crick develop in his neck.

“The water's ready,” he croaks. He hasn't checked it but they must've been at this long enough. His eyes cling to a particular crack on the wall until he hears him glide under the water. He thinks he hears the tiny bubbles in the foam crackle and pop. “There are clothes on the washing machine next to the toilet. I'll, I'll just… be on the other side, okay?” he says and flees.

Outside, Dante lets his back slip against the door and slides down to the floor against it, head buried between his knees. “Breathe,” his lungs rattle at him.

He breathes.

He ---.

He'll stay here in watch, ready to burst in if he hears anything go amiss, but he can't get closer. If he hates this helplessness this vehemently, he can't imagine what it must be like for Vergil who has always priced his independence above most things.

He can't. He radiates his need like a sonar, firing waves of ultrasound into the void. Dante doesn't think Vergil can sense it and especially read it like this, but it's possible, it's Vergil, maybe, maybe, maybe.

It's that − He should − Shit, it's making him want to tear his skin off to remember that he's passed out most nights and days and mornings wishing he had one last chance to talk, argue, chew the fat, shout, confess. Now that he has is, he has it, he can't bring himself to use it, and even if he could, he wouldn't, because he can't.

He'd pay almost anything to just get closer, but the one thing he can't trade is sitting in the tub unless he has already fainted and lost his feeble grasp on consciousness and drowned in the death pool Dante made for him. He's made the bed, oughtn't to be this upset to lie in it. He wants, but −

Truth is, Dante doesn't know how to talk to him. He doesn't know if they can have an actual conversation anymore, but he could do with Vergil just listening and he has no idea if he would. He's not sure what he would say − there's simultaneously far too much and too little to unpack and shovel at him, but one of the only things he can be sure of is that words would come out like spilling guts, should he abandon his last selfless efforts of sparing Vergil from the ugly. Dante is sufficiently unattractive as is. But it wouldn't be talking, really, more like a shameful seppuku, warped and tainted until it looks nothing like its ideal, until it accomplishes nothing. He doesn't know how to go about even that, never mind saying something of worth.

He's sick and tired of being this sick and tired.

He breathes and begins to undress to save them some time. Eventually, he realizes they're both naked, separated by the wall.

There's a big solid-wood bookshelf on the wall opposite of him. He's been staring at it without taking anything in. Something about it catches his attention suddenly and involuntarily; it's nothing demonic or menacing, but since he's basically the opposite of curious, it doesn't bode well. Most of the spines he sees are bare from any text, whether printed on the covers or pressed directly on them; the backs are covered by a film of dust and the dust jackets aren't there to protect them. Rows and rows of mute, nondescript bricks until he spots some gold-colored letters there in the middle._ On the Fabric of the Human Body_. _The Origin of Species_. _Sexual Behavior in the Human Male_. Biology.

So. So there was once a time when he was naïve enough to think that he could explain things away by science and reason. Incidentally, it was also the time when he believed in being able to improve himself as a human, into a human. One day, dressed down to his civvies and a plush scarf wrapped around his face, he sneaked into a remote library. Biology. It was on the second floor but there were people perusing the shelves there. A couple, a woman and a man, young and healthy and attractive, making a small scene of teasing each other and joking about the teacher that made them read this kind of boring shit. The woman laughed and smiled so widely he could see her gums and exemplarily pearly teeth; she giggled and swatted the guy's arm when he showed her some dirty title or other. A dentist's brochure, a moment stolen from a commercial. He heard the book he was holding for appearance's sake crack. Couldn't make out the language dotted on the pages. He can't recall the exact title of the book he found soon after the lovebirds had left and he had slunk to the bookcase. He sweated, his blood dry and flowing over the banks. No way out, no way to borrow it without going through a nosy, disinterested, judgmental, indifferent librarian. His hands shook so much he dropped the tome to the marble and heard the sound echo even louder than his heart was gonging. In the end, he realized the book had slipped inside his jacket when he started to come to in an alley four block to the north. Never quite managed to make himself feel bad about the stealing.

He can't remember the exact title, but the contents have followed him like a miasma ever since. It was not something they discussed at any length home, not even when he was constantly surrounded by stories of inbred gods and heroes and half-breeds. Maybe it was their mother's way of protecting them; she did suspect something, she must have known, she hinted at it by separating them into two entities in two rooms and beds but never spoke a word, the word. He learns it later and too late. Incest, he reads from a headline he spots while prowling alone on the streets, and he steals a copy and reads and nothing is ever the same after that.

The contents of the book stick with him. The Westermarck effect, reverse sexual imprinting. The instinct that tells any functioning mammals: you've been raised with that, played with that, that is your sibling, you don't want to fuck that. Pages upon pages on some innate, fundamental reactions he's supposed to possess by the virtue of his species and by having lived closely together with his twin brother from their shared birth to the tender age of eight. How it's a culture universal that sibling pairings are taboo, that childhood proximity produces sexual aversion especially when the parties are close in age, that in wild animal populations close relatives almost never breed. Dante really is a fucking tapeworm at best. Amazing. (Nature creates all kinds of sick things, sick fucks. Sometimes it occurs to him that perhaps there's nothing wrong with him, that he's the way he's supposed to be. It doesn't help, the predetermination lying there scares and scars him. He refuses to acknowledge he could be predestined to hurt Vergil like that.)

The main thing he's so ashamed of, when you get down to it deep enough that he can't slather blood on things he'd rather not see as a coverup, is that he's not ashamed at all about the fact itself. Isn't, wasn't, probably won't be. The guilt about it − that he's so far gone that he doesn't even have the decency to be mortified by his feelings −, however, is something he can wrap around himself and inhale until he doesn't know where it ends and he begins, until it starts to look like shame in his dimly lit bedroom and in his bed, inside his lustful grip, and his conscience can sleep for one night. He's not ashamed because it's his brother. He's wrecked by the guilt because it's Vergil. He should love him too much to be in love with him.

It's the guilt that drives him to his do it yourself conversion therapy. His tactic of spending a fortune on skin mags and plastering the walls of his digs with posters of busty and flat women in varying stages of supposedly tantalizing undress only burns a hole in his wallet and makes Lady frown in particularly sharp distaste even when she's been known to ogle a handsome pair herself. Somehow it never feels right to buy firefighter calendars or the like even when he's pretty sure he's some sort of absurdly picky gay or programmed to respond to one body only, which just happens to be undeniably male. He tries but doesn't really make an effort to change. The soberest segments of him know it won't happen; he's had a lot of customers of both genders and all levels of attractiveness trying to pay for his exterminating services with services of their own and there's zero interest there. The bottom line is he feels less like a freak when he's drunk and horny if he can pretend he's beating it to the poor ladies.

He can't say Vergil is exactly normal, either. Dante's sure Vergil would be the first to admit it: it was never an option for them, no matter how hard Mom tried. He used to resent her attempts and her by extension and went through a nice spell of guilt about that too.

(_She's there, stiffening in her own fluids, blood that's also his, and for a moment, he thinks he's almost glad, that from now on nothing will ever keep them apart, that their loss will tie them together so tightly that not even Hell can tear them from each other, but the smoke burns his eyes and the carbon monoxide embraces his lungs and in the middle of the burning, collapsing, emptying house he realizes he doesn't sense him; the thread has been cut and he hasn't even noticed him asphyxiate_. _He resents her for making him feel guilty. He resents her for falling in love. He resent her for failing to save him. He resents her for trying. He resents understanding he_'_d_ _trade her for him_ _every single time but the choice has been taken from him and in the end he has neither_.)

Vergil's not normal, but he was never broken until Dante broke him, until Mundus did, and the manner in which he is bent is different, forced, not inborn.

“I'm sorry,” he thinks without fully grasping what he's so sorry about.

He hears the water splash and drip on the floor. He estimates it's soon. Good. Dante only moves when the door bumps into his back, gently.

It somehow manages to be worse than it was when Vergil was bloodied and streaked with the black bile he bled from his ruptured eyes and pierced mouth and when the only thing he was wrapped in aside from the filth was the cotton robe. He's absolutely swimming in the clothes Dante stole for him and the cleanliness makes his eyelessness more visible.

His scent is fading. Obviously, undeniably, it's not just the lavender-tinged soap cloaking his essence under the smell of a painfully artificial meadow. He's -- less there. Diminished, diminishing. Dante wants to press his face against his only wrist, his jugular, in a futile quest to find out if the perfume lingers stronger, longer, on his pulse points.

Vergil has no pulse. Vergil, he thinks, a touch hysterical, has no heart. The sentence is not a novel one but he appreciates the literalness. What a nice touch.

He's weak. He's selfish with the sudden desperate feverish desire for him to know something, anything.

“I'm sorry.”

He's said it; not much more than a whisper, an undertone, but it's the kind of honesty he has to kill some fragile part of himself to reach.

He breathes and hears his organs expand and contract. Vergil --

Vergil walks past him.

“Whatever for?” his back says. He doesn't need to see his face to know it's as unresponsive as his voice.

He's sorry he can't take it back.

Dante only notices he has barged past his brother to face him and that his hand is raised towards him when he takes a step forward and falters. Vergil hisses when Dante tries to grab him and slinks to the kitchen from between his extended arms, the instincts of a cornered animal honing his movements sharper and more accurate than anticipated. There he outright wilts on the table, not bothering with sitting or being too exhausted to do so. He curls on his side and faces him with blankness. Dante opens his mouth to inform him there's a sofa standing against the wall behind it and behind his back − he doesn't see it himself, shit − but closes it before any words get out. No need to injure his dignity further when this is what's become of it. When he has brushed him off so thoroughly, effortlessly.

The eyeless look he casts him feels challenging. Look at me, it proclaims. Look at what I have got to be sorry about.

Dante can't.

Invertebrate and entirely gutless even when Vergil mended him and sewed his intestines back into his body, he turns towards the bathroom. It's a silent admission from his part: “I'm not what I used to be. “ The act is redundant; Vergil could see that on Temen-ni-gru and again in Hell, if he could remember peanuts like that (things like his little brother) and compare them to Dante's current state after everything he must have suffered. If it's not him, it sure knows how to hurt him like Vergil.

He feels his gaze boring a hole into his back while knowing he's helped him wash away his liquefied eyeballs.

(What he has ever wanted the most: for Vergil to see him. Maybe that's articulated wrong, though; clearly, he sees him for what he is, better than he does himself. Maybe he would just like Vergil to look at him, as crushing as the thought sounds like currently. He wants a plenty and all of it is horrible.)

Euthanasia, he thinks in the tub to have something in his head that all of a sudden is too empty, distressing. Εὐθανασία. A good death. Is there a bad death still there somewhere? The water is black and dirty and smells of blood and Vergil and it takes a while for it to drain and for him to tug the plug off to let it drain. He sits and waits and scrubs his skin until it's red. At some point he's filled the porcelain with new water and accomplished cleaning himself thoroughly enough. He dresses, efficient and fast.

If that's how Vergil will have him, he'll stifle his reactions and emotions outwardly and maybe even forgets he has them himself.

When he gets back to the kitchen, Vergil's nowhere to be found, not until he feels something metallic hit the back of his head and is pressed against the floor face first, a naked body holding him down.

Well. He was asking for it, wasn't he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A side note: Dante's canon politics of naming his office make pretty much zero sense to me (I know there's some extended canon reason for why it's _Devil Never Cry_ after DMC 1 and then back to _DMC_ in 5, but it's still a bit awkward to me). The continuity I'm going with in this part/series is that he established his business already before DMC 3 and called it _DNC_ until the place got destroyed soon after 3 and got relocated and named _Devil May Cry_. I prefer to keep things close to canon in general when I can, but some stuff just has to be played fast and loose with. 
> 
> Next chapter: Action, bullets, (mis)communication. (Plot, too.)


	12. xii. Marked with White Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 12: a more proper welcome to Fortuna.
> 
> I expected getting back to This after writing a silly fluffy piece would be difficult, but nah, it's still the usual ~ 10 000 words update. (Damn, I'm sad to lose the word count of 69 666 :D)

The things is, Dante has a thick head and inside it even a sturdier, more stubborn skull that's equally as good at resisting physical blows as it is at defying any knocks of common sense that occasionally rappel against the bone to little avail. He wasn't kidding about bashing the door open with it, almost; he sure makes for an excellent battering ram if nothing else, true and tested. The frying pan he is currently pummelled with, on the other hand, is a cheap, flimsy aluminium instrument − while there's a heavy-duty cast iron pot lying on the countertop, it's got no convenient handle on it to make aiming and maiming people with it easier, Vergil might not find it from there owing to the whole inconvenient blindness thing and it might also be too heavy for him to lift, fuck. The not-unstoppable force put into the strike meets an immovable object and a paradox doesn't happen; Dante's head merely makes a dent in the formerly flat base. It hurts somewhat and he goes down, but that's got more to do with him being startled and less with the power of the impact. The sound the contact makes is more of a dull thud than a resounding clang too, he notes while he maps out the position of his limbs on the floor and tries to gather his breath. Isn't that hard; his lungs aren't really pressed tightly into an empty plastic bag in his chest or anything like that. Actually, he feels the weight on top of him mostly just because he's yet to put on his newly appropriated shirt and there's an obscene amount of skin contact going on between them. The lightness that terrified him to the core earlier is emphasized even further by the lack of the heavy fabric adding some heft to the hollow blown-glass figure which has assumed some of the features of the model correctly and distorted others into idiosyncrasies he'd like to learn by heart but is evidently running out of time to survey.

No concussion, he's much too lucid and aware of the way the flakes of tough, chipping skin scrape against him for that. Here's a stick-thin thigh on his back and here's a knee that should be poking against him sharply but isn't because of lacking the bones for it, here's a remnant of a shrunken ankle brushing against his skin. Long lanky leg running in between. He wonders if it's just him or if everyone has to urge themselves to think unsexy and/or non-depressing thoughts about their aggressor when being murdered. The feelings intertwine and bleed into each other and feed a loop of sensory feedback into his systems until he thinks that maybe it's the pain turning him on, that he can't tell arousal and agony apart, begins to question if he ever has. Disorientates him more profoundly than any external stimulation right now.

The awaited clang comes when the mangled utensil is dropped to the floor, stone in this part of the room. Dante hates surprises, so he doesn't like not being repeatedly beaten up with the makeshift club like he thought he'd be, now that he's on the ground and thus some measure of “defenceless”, relatively. His lousy luck won't let it be over already and allow Vergil to get instantly back to himself. Got to be something else then, some other reason why his cranium isn't serving as a punching bag anymore. Somehow, he suspects it isn't Vergil's long-lost conscience catching up with his actions and deeming icing his little brother with such a blunt weapon distasteful.

He doesn't know who or what is holding the reins there. The chances of it being Vergil are looking as slim as him, but maybe there's something he can do to lure him out. Best to still avoid any sudden movements.

“Feel better yet, brother?” he asks measuredly. It's pretty much his first instinct to resort to glibness and jokes and self-deprecation when things go sideways, so it's what he goes with. If there's one way he's ever managed to get through to him, it's by annoying him out of his skull, at the very least as obstinate as Dante's. “I understand if you want to take it all out on something, really, but we're kind of on a schedule here. Killing me can wait a bit, yeah?”

No answer. He wasn't honestly expecting one, but it was worth a cheap shot. Now what?

Every embryo of a plan gets thrown out of the window when he feels Vergil press the tips of his fingers against the back of his neck, all four of them. He's slightly weirded out by it before he realizes that he's attempting to pierce his flesh and flay him open again or whatever, not very successfully. His nails don't sink in, can't break skin, can't let loose the pull Dante's blood is singing with deep inside him, _let him do it, let him, let him in_. Feels more like a strange caress with clumsily excessive force than attempted murder, as a matter of fact. Dante gets alarmed when he senses them start to crumble into powder from the pressure. Vergil is grinding his body away against his, making himself erode into nothingness in his quest to kill him with this exhausted relentlessness that's a sad excuse for the will he's always admired and hated in equal measure. Dante's stomach turns and he can't help thinking of which comes first, him suffocating in his own vomit or Vergil erasing himself completely. Vergil keeps scraping himself off mindlessly, not caring about the alarmed sound Dante's throat makes, an abominable hybrid between a sob and dry heaving. 

He's still not breathing. His hands tremble and it's highly unclear if the pan was dropped intentionally or not.

“Vergil,” he calls, fighting against his ailing body. No reaction. The fingers rake against him industriously but mostly it just tickles and probably makes his skin a shade of irritated pink. Dante is just estimating how much strength he should be putting into shoving Vergil to the ground − too much and he'll shatter him by his own hands, and the thought finally shatters the last pieces of his steadfast childhood belief that Vergil's invulnerable, untouchable, that he can stop holding himself back with him and be careless with himself and he'll always bounce back no matter what and frankly he has always been like Mundus, supposing that Vergil's there to be his personal plaything and sparring aid, except more selfish, dishonestly labelling the greed something else (he should stop him from killing himself _now_ even if it means killing himself and he's dizzy, foam in his head) − when he hears a click. He gasps when he feels a box cutter bury itself into him − it does sting, but the aim is off and it doesn't hit anything vital. The blade pierces his neck and he pretty much only feels relieved for Vergil's remaining digits. Naturally, it's much too early for that − Vergil twists the knife curtly and somehow manages to cut one of them off, maybe by grabbing the weapon too low and accidentally holding the blade instead of the handle. Dante doesn't know how it happens, just that it happens, by feeling a large clump of the dust spread on his skin. Seven down, three to go.

Okay, enough with the games; the way it's going, they'll have a tie between Vergil offing himself by mistake and Dante suffocating in his tears. The feeling of being so close to pathetic crying is more uncomfortable than the knife cutting into his tissue, now wiggling a bit with Vergil's feeble little attempts of slashing his neck open and making him bleed to death or whatever. Must say something nice about his psyche.

It's almost no trouble at all to use their considerable weight difference to his advantage to reverse their position and pin his frail assaulter to the floor instead. Vergil struggles a bit, weakly, weakly. Reminds him of a wet kitten, what with his soaked hair and all. Schrödinger's kitty is about to die, the cause poisonous gas or not. The power purring in his movements and his hands, just gone like that, like it never was. It was the ring finger getting the chop this time, he notices when he shackles his arm to the floor. That too. Gone now. The relatively tiny wound the stabbing caused has stopped running but the smell wafts and swirls in the air, bringing a familiar hint of unreality to the situation. (_His blood, not Vergil's, like at Mallet island and every other time he's killed him after that and why does he long for it so much when he tells himself he wants him to heal?)_ He tugs the flimsy knife off next with a wet sound and throws it into a corner, but the thing he's choking in is definitely not blood. If this is all that's left… is it really worth saving? This sickly twitching thing that can barely gather the energy to curl his leftover fingers, as if reaching for a weapon that's just not there.

(Is Vergil really looking for a cure or is this merely him carrying out the suicide by Dante plot he harbored some suspicions of earlier − something he can't still bring himself to ask for in words, even when the indignity of that couldn't arguably be beaten by being reduced to this? Could Dante do it now, retrieve the cutter and puncture the shell maybe holding the tatters of his soul hostage inside, the prison this time around more fragile and alluring but a jail nonetheless? Would he even notice Dante the slayer driving a stake through the empty place which once possibly held his heart? Would there be anything to prevent him from severing off his own head, after? Would his mind do him a favor and _shut up_ \-- There's this godawful part of him that wants to do it, wants to let go and give up and let him go, finally. _You've done it twice_, it says to him. _These things always happen in threes_.)

True to form, only now that the situation is mostly dealt with does Dante begin to get truly hysteric.

“Vergil! Come on, we've got to get moving, gotta get to Yamato,“ he prattles and tries to shake the arm gently, his eyes stinging with excess salt. Vergil turns his head from side to side with a limp, slack neck and a cold feverish quality in his movements. He keeps at it when Dante babbles some more − it's not a reaction to his words, it's him having a seizure or being made to spasm and quaver by someone pulling the strings or hitting the buttons of a remote somewhere or, or, or. Isn't Dante supposed to be good at exorcism by the virtue of his trade, why is he so goddamn helpless in this?

(_Third time lucky_.)

He thinks of slapping him back to this mortal plane, violence being the language they share and the one Vergil, the twin with a somewhat functional notion of self-preservation, will be able to interpret as long as he can make sense of anything happening around him in general, but the incidents with the fingers rule that out. Shitfuck.

(_Third time's the charm_.)

He doesn't get to know what finally does it: eventually, in a time that's probably measured in minutes but that drags on like series of dead, endless seasons, Vergil simply stops threshing about and freezes. Doesn't last enough for any conscious thought to enter Dante's mind, just the predictable visceral reaction ballooning inside him and interrupting the chant of his name or whatever he's been churning out subconsciously. No, not now, not again, not him -- Then something in his face twitches. It's like the first droplets of a mild shower of rain on water; the first, then another one, the circles they draw out accentuated until there's a third, a fourth, the gravity waves intermingling and melting into each other and there it is, the fraction of an expression. The manner in which his face scrunches up communicates that he's making an attempt to blink again.

“Verge?” he tries. The hope that _just won't die_ distorts his voice and makes it sound painfully young. Or maybe it's not that, maybe it's just his brain doing a playback from the past where a person with such a pet name did exist, an auditory hallucination this time.

Vergil bares his teeth and growls: “_What_?”

“Vergil,” he tries again. His heart is trying to slip under his tongue. Vergil's mouth slackens at the word.

“Get off me,” he orders flatly.

“Gladly,” Dante replies and picks himself up. Vergil shakes his limbs and tries to mask the minute twitch his right arm makes when it apparently registers he can only do it with that one. To give it to him, Dante only notices because of focusing on the hand, which he figures is the safest part of him to look at. Three to go.

“Do you know where we are?” he asks when he helps Vergil on his feet in turn. The predictable “yes” is accompanied with a little wobbling and wavering. Not exactly good as new, but it could be and will be worse.

“And where is that exactly? “ he prods. “Just checking,” he says defensively when Vergil does his eyeless impression of an empty stare he's perfected admirably quickly. “You did say you've got some type of amnesia already. It's not a huge stretch to suppose things could go downhill with your memory, especially if, uhh, this sort of bull keeps happening.”

“Fortuna, on our way to Yamato − unless you have other bright ideas of how I could waste time I do not ha−“

Dante butts in before he can finish. “Hey, I have no idea what we're dealing with here, only that it's bad and getting worse and it makes you get into a trance or some other garden variety of murderous intent.” He doesn't claim it's not his fault because it is, any way he looks at it, ultimately. It's another thing altogether that Vergil does everything in his power to make things harder. (Is he doing it intentionally, stalling? His mind dishes out the option he's quick to bury in the same hole where he's dumped most of his uncomfortable Vergil-related thoughts and dreams. They'll resurface, they always do, but he can't deal with them being on the front 24/7.)

“What, pray tell, makes you think I do?” Vergil says and rubs the funeral site of his hand inconspicuously against his very naked hip like someone two-handed would do with his other hand. Seven down.

When Dante doesn't answer, he sighs and leans back against the table, still seemingly unconcerned by his still very prominent full-frontal nudity. Dante feels the sudden need to assume a position against it as well. Doesn't have to find something else to look at that way, maybe. He can stand next to him and scrutinize the paneling like it's nothing. He stares at the plain icon on the wall opposite of them and counts to three. One. It's a weird one, it's got this peculiar hat that kind of resembles antlers if he squints and everything. Come to think of it, he's recognized precisely none of the holy men he's spotted in the frames hanging here. Some local heroes, maybe − or then he can put it down to his own lacking expertise and the lacking technique of the artists. The pictures are admittedly pretty homely even to his layman sensibilities. Worst Jesus or saint Pete ever. Two. He means, come on: can't even make out what the dude is holding in his hands. A shovel? It could be an agrarian saint. The farmer who made enough flour and angled long enough to feed the entire town with his two loaves of bread and five little fishies. Fortuna gothic. Or a hunter, with a crown of horns.

Three.

“There is… a failsafe,” Vergil says, naked. “It was fed by the corruption and since that has been driven out, the contingency is weaker but not inexistent.”

No, hold on −

“Motherfucking -- Alright, a failsafe, awesome, great, just what we needed. But more importantly − what the fuck, Vergil? You knew that all this time? What more aren't you telling me?” he wheezes, not bothering with hiding the tone of his voice. Accusing. Hurt. Dejected. The usual. Dignity is a commodity he can't afford, not with him.

“A lot. Of this particular predicament or in general?” Vergil replies with nonchalant, dry, bone-tired honesty. Won't even bother to mask it or to pretend to be sorry about it, not with him.

“Forget it, I don't give a damn” he grits out. Of course it's a lie. “This'll take us nowhere. How do we take it out?”

“We don't.” He foresees Dante protesting before he actually does and continues. “Not for the time being. The only way to deactivate it is to kill _him_, unless killing me is also on the table.” The corner of Dante's eye knows he has turned his face towards him while finishing his sentence, oh so calm, waiting. He knows. Turns his own head to the other direction even when Vergil can't see it.

Yeah. There's not a lot he can say to that.

Just as he said, they've got to get moving. This is, in the end, merely one more thing they have to deal with. Since they've got too much of those already, it doesn't really matter that much.

He doesn't ask why Vergil is naked, mostly because he doesn't think he knows himself. His attempts of paying it no mind, not letting it make him awkward and heartbroken, take a more valiant effort than he thought he'd be capable of. He tries not to notice the lack of sharp collarbones carving his upper body; how his delicate neck has lost all the tendons and veins that drove Dante crazy with the desire to lick and bite and mark; how his emaciated stomach is swallowed by the cracks that are dark even without the ichor pushing against them, no hint of muscles, ribs or navel. “I'll get you a new set of clothes.”

Well, actually there is an explanation to the nudity, almost. He notices it when he feels something sharp bite into the sole of his right foot when he turns towards the bedroom − a shard of purple glass. There's a broken vase lying on the floor next to a heap of wet clothes close to the kitchen counter. He ignores the shrapnel until he gets back to the wardrobe which is really starting to look like an appealing place to hide and trap oneself in again. While plucking it out and marveling how upset such a simple thing like bleeding keeps getting him time after time, he sketches out two idle theories: either Vergil was first hit by the episode by unknown and thus unsettling reasons and then managed to upend the glass and had it spill on him in his literally blind quest to find something to arm himself with, which spooked him/it enough that stripping the clothes off seemed just like the thing to do to get rid of the unexpected wetness − or he pushed the vase over accidentally while he was searching for a makeshift weapon, all lucid and full of intention, got freaked out by the noise and stuff and that made him hulk out. He doesn't know which alternative he prefers. Most likely neither. Ladies and gents, this is his life.

The bottom line in every case is that he can't trust Vergil because he can't trust his ability to recognize him. Would he trust him even if he could do that, though? Beats him. The vase has spilled and so has the milk; no use hypothesizing when his pants are wet already and it's so very cold outside, the hypothermia planting its teeth on him. His brain hurts. He hates this.

This time the closet is just a closet. It could be nice to have his world narrowed down into such a small space again, but there's no salvation to be had here. If he does what he can do best and gives in to his cowardness, the one and only result he'll accomplish is getting Vergil killed in a reenactment of the events from twenty years ago. If he had refused to cower when he could have at least _tried_ \-- He chooses pants with a string in the waist to have a fighting chance in making them fit in the broadest sense of the word. A small mirror on the wall tells him his beard is getting ridiculous and he should consider shaving it before leaving unless he feels like getting arrested for loitering and vagrancy and being a general (in)human disaster. He tells it to stop spying on him but does pick up the pair of simple black sunglasses with large lenses he happens to spot. If the glasses are for his own benefit or that of the townspeople who are likely to freak out and cause them trouble when faced with an eyeless, crumbling man, well, he just doesn't give a damn.

“If it's a failsafe, it's got to be activated by something. Would be great to be able to avoid that shit, yeah? What triggers it?” he asks when he gets back from his little excursion and voices a question he's been pondering about inactively. At least his dependant seems to be awake this once, judging by the fact he's where he left him, stooped against the table. Dante is so quick to help him in the pants that he doesn't have the time to answer until he's pulling the thin rope around him as tightly as one would when anchoring a boat.

Vergil opens and closes his mouth in uncharacteristic hesitation before replying. It's a blatant tell - whatever it is that comes out next won't be the full truth, this he knows. “I cannot tell. Sleeping, I suspect. Losing consciousness, more broadly.” Dante waits a beat for him to elaborate, but of course he doesn't. He helps him with the socks he's already forgot nicking, pulls his own stolen shirt finally on and even gets them plain leather shoes from the hallway. He decides against making Vergil wear them when he notices how small they are; his sturdy toes and heels can handle the chafe unlike his brother's. Makes no difference: the bike is still there waiting for them, he just knows that, so it's not like he has to walk a lot anyway.

He seems to accept Dante's long silence as a reply. “We should leave.”

“Yeah. Just let me get you in this and we're done.”

He pulls shirt number two over his raised hand and head and thinks he has a stroke when he's gotten it on him and steals a glance of him like the thief he is. He's -- Vergil's left ear hangs on the collar, loose and cheery like a small perching bird, until he shrugs to make Dante let go of the hem he's now holding in a death grip. Naturally, the movements make it fall and crush on the flooring. It's all very unceremonious and so fucking unfair Dante would scream if the mortification didn't entirely numb him. His pound of flesh isn't apparently enough, they're on their way to leaving more of him in this house alone, he thinks, freaks out himself.

“Let go, get on with it,” Vergil says.

He didn't notice, no. (At least dying appears to be painless, this time.)

“Fuck,” Dante curses and releases the hem and cups his head between his palms as if it's any use, as if ogling could make missing body parts grow back again and mend the things Dante has ruined. There was a tree, Vergil said, and then it wasn't and the hatred he harbors for Mundus is only surpassed by the obvious. If he could channel the loathing he holds for himself in this blindingly white spot in time into something Vergil's collapsing body could use in any way, he'd gladly bleed himself dry. As it is, he'll manage to take him apart before aftereffects of being made into a fallen angel can finish the job. What flat out kills him here is that this is what Vergil is left with, his last hope probably − a fumbling fucking idiot that obliterates every single thing of value with the efficiency of an army of demons. “Fuck, Vergil, I broke your fucking _ear_, I'm, I'm so sorry.”

Vergil twitches, looks pinched and downbeat under a transparent, tiredly spun layer of indifference. “Which one?” his bored voice asks. Dante rubs his thumb on the spot in answer. It's like the surface of an uneven porous stone, only not durable at all. He clings to his skin in a veil of small particles. (“We are dust and shadows,” the brother of his memories whispers, soft and cruel like gunmetal and mother of pearl.)

“Vergil. I'm so sorry, I made your fucking ear fall of, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” His words catch in his gullet, but he rips them off with their roots until they bleed out fluently, fluidly.

“Dante.” Vergil's hand on his is barely there, but his voice stuffs his airways closed. “_Stop saying that_.” Any dredges of politeness his wording might hold are washed away by his steely tone. “Shut the fuck up,” his brain translates.

He does. He did promise to quit dragging him into the swamp with him. It might be impossible for him to get up, to drop his emotions, but he can flounder in the filthy marsh water alone and let him keep his bare feet dry. For what feels like the thousandth time, he congratulates the possible skin walker for its ability to brush him aside just like his brother would. It's right, though; his being sorry accomplishes nothing.

Right, they'll leave, now.

His plan of avoiding extra attention on them won't work thanks to this most recent fuck-up of his, so he abandons the shades on the table.

Dante feels bad − or at least thinks he should be feeling bad, which is the same thing, isn't it − for not cleaning his mess up. Hurry. Schedule. The upside is that demon blood makes all those fancy forensic science things conk out. Since there's thus no way for the lawful possessors of the house to track the culprits down, he can bask in the certainty that nothing will be exploding in his face from the mundane side of things when the dust eventually settles. Well, apart from the rent and bills _Devil May Cry _has churned out in the meanwhile, probably. Doesn't feel like much of a victory. Vergil makes him gather the bloodied clothes and he doesn't question his reasons, but everything else gets to stay on the floor to the great delight of the homeowners, should they ever return. Since they've already been terrible house guests, maybe Dante should've eaten something as well − it's handy not having to take a leak when nothing goes down, but he can't count on his endurance when his system has been fucked with, having been to Hell and back. On their way out, there's a bottle of sunflower oil sitting on top of a spice rack. He chugs it down and supposes it's disgusting. The energy doesn't make him feel better; he'll never ever forgive himself if he passes out because of a stupid thing like not eating when he could prevent it, though. He'll gladly provide Vergil with his life force as long as he can and maybe this helps, but damn, he's tired, tired, tired.

He leaves a crumpled banknote, his last one, on the hallway table. It's a collection to a god he doesn't believe in. Superficial piety to gain illusory relief, his worn-out amen.

The sun has climbed higher and it's a beautiful day outside. Outside of the scene of their breaking and entering, Vergil stumbles down on the last step of the porch. Dante, as is customary, is too slow to catch his fall. Fortunately, nothing save for Vergil's pride seems to have been injured, he notes when he pulls him up as carefully as someone reasonable would handle fragile china. There's a vivid recollection of the way the Vendetta bit into Arius' precious vases thrumming under the skin of his palms when they rest on him. It's his lot in life to break things, not to put them together or guard them.

“There is no time for this,” he says blandly when Dante's touch lingers a moment too long. He doesn't voice the “help me get on the bike first, though”. Dante remembers his earlier resolve and lets the matter drop.

Okay, they need to rethink the logistics of this. He won't allow Vergil to sit on the back only supported by the arm anymore, even if the alternatives might eat at his ego and make Dante uncomfortable. He helps Vergil lift his leg over the trunk and tries to ignore how it would fit inside the grip of his hand from the thigh to the ankle. It's bad form to notice things about a person who's wasting away and he can't still help it. Here he is, fondling the legs that have been haunting his wet dreams so frequently that they're only beaten by the damned mouth, the cusp of his perverse, miserable monomania, and instead of boiling in his vile lust he is getting dull and desensitized in a way that should be a comfort but isn't.

He catches a glimpse of the thick black wound splitting his lips in two just a bit left from the left peak of his cupid's bow and thinks of white funeral flowers. Sword lilies, orchids. Withering petals set free into the winds, dead corolla glimmering beneath the still surface of a lake.

(Why does he still want to kiss them?)

Dante settles on the bike around him after cramming the soiled scraps of fabric into the empty tank − it might as well serve as a storage compartment, seeing that it's doing nothing related to fuel −, sitting as far back on the trunk as he can. The prominent sinew or muscle or what the fuck ever on his inner thigh quivers when he arranges his legs around him, on the pedal. It's not a comfortable position to have Vergil propped between them like a gift he's asked for so many times but doesn't want to receive now that it's there, but he has to make do somehow. Vergil doesn't signal his unhappiness, doesn't speak argue move exhale inhale.

All the neighboring houses are still empty, too. Nothing really amiss outwardly, all the people missing − the ship has sunk and the rats have left the wreck. Does his solipsism no good: if he hadn't had his organs rearranged by an (the?) Angelo and felt the petty little demons swarm inside the walls, he'd think he's been all alone in the world for so long that everything else that might have existed once has ceased to be. Just him and the less and less corporeal ghost.

“Drive.” Vergil aims. Dante resists the urge to suffocate himself in his drying hair and drives. Goes where he's pointed, a hollow bullet.

The demons start to whisper to him long before they're back to where they first ascended. Not their blank animal-like minds, their blood. The honesty of it; the urge to kill and feed and dominate is a push he recognizes, it's a simple call. He can't tell if the depthless hunger wreathing around his bones is theirs or his. He's much too aware of his teeth, senses them and how they sit in his mouth and inside his gums too sharply, spit-slick ivory. Unlike Vergil, he's got a skeleton inside and suddenly it feels loose and separate, his focus clinging onto every juncture where it meets his flesh. There are so many things off here that the normal workings of his ligaments and muscles are starting to seem unsettling as well.

You can take him out of Hell but can you can't take hell out of him, it seems.

Predictably, it gets gradually louder when they get closer to the gates. Whatever this piece of crap they're riding is at the end of the day, at least it's fine in the speed department. Instead of climbing off and pushing the approaching doors open like a real person, he switches appearances for a few seconds in a fit of reckless anxiety and blasts them off their hinges with a burst of energy. Vergil makes a sound at the back of his mouth. It probably isn't him choking or the like, so Dante shrugs it off in favor of returning to his human-like form and taking their new location in while simultaneously avoiding the group of pests that is instantly on them like a colorful wave being released by a broken dam. The shape of them is unfamiliar but the functions of all these critters are the same no matter what local spices have been added into the mess. They might be demonic animate scarecrows scraped together by a motley medley of coarse textiles and leftover scythes, okay, but they behave pretty much like inanimate burlap sacks when he runs over them and into them, although the screaming is a bonus. The strawless strawmen burst into puddles of garbage-smelling slurry when he releases his left hand from the grip and shoots the worst of them just to be safe. His (in?)human shield can't handle being hit by the blades, so as slow, dull and inaccurate as the creatures are to wield them, it's best to keep their distance.

This is Fortuna city, then, he notes while they make their bumpy way towards what must be the center of it. The pests screech and wail when he crushes them under the wheels; otherwise, though, it's really empty and quiet here, eerily so. Weird if these things have managed to kill all the people already. There are no corpses littering the streets either, though, no passersby to get traumatized by the two of them.

Relatively small for a city, Dante appraises while making a detour from the posher main road to evade a bigger wave. The center area looks pretty fancy but is very limited size, seeing that the facades of the buildings start to look very different very quickly when one takes a different road, ramshackle apartments and plain, brown walls. The buildings along the main street, Dante thinks when he gets them back there, are quite lavishly decorated, sure, but they're built sparsely and the alleyways and avenues are definitely wider than necessary. Several squares and parks with a couple of trees and lots of grass. In essence: lots of empty space you don't really want in a densely populated area. The nicer-looking zone thus seems to be a façade of sorts. What for?

Everything is the same variation of dirty, yellowish off-white of some kind of cheapo marble that's presumably supposed to look regal and expensive but is just grubby to him, almost as if it's merely a sloppy paintjob. It's weird; the buildings have this ancient Renaissance or whatever style, but if you look past the dirt and wear and bad upkeep, they appear mostly as new as the wall running around them. Some of them look partly older yet they've got newer segments and additions on them; for example, the frescoes on this one over here might be original and aged, but that balcony with the rusty iron railing sure as hell isn't. It's like the whole building stock is for the most part built in a hurry and made out of different body parts from different times just like the demons − there's strange discord in it, incongruent styles incorporated into each other with little forethought, as if whatever goes if it looks grand and pompous. It's a weird mix of old and new and he has no idea where one would keep an ancient devil arm in a place like this.

He's never heard of blooming tourism to this area, which makes sense seeing that Fortuna is located on an island which doesn't have the best of transportation options (why the walls, then? To keep something in?). All this emptiness tells him this isn't a bustling metropolitan bursting with the business types. There are no shiny skyscrapers, there are almost no stores or cafes or other holes in the walls to be spotted, no advertisement; Dante is fairly certain that the classier edifices have next to no inhabitants either. He only spotted trash containers and other signs of life when the little devils forced him to take a left or two earlier.

“Where to?” he finds himself yelling.

“The fortress,” Vergil answers. He's been so still and silent that the answer almost startles him.

“Not in the center, is that?” he predicts. Can't have it too easy, can they.

“No,” confirms the reply.

“Alright then. Just got the figure out a way to avoid these fuckers. This is only the front line, but the main horde's just around the corner and we don't want to run into that,” he says while blasting the peskier individuals of this unorganized unit into pieces.

“I can still fight,” Vergil notes in the same colorless pitch he's been using this whole conversation, if exchanging three consecutive sentences at the most deserves to be called such.

“Technically, I can lie down on the street and let the demons eat me alive right now, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna fucking do it,” Dante hides his incredulous tone by snapping unintelligently. There's an awful sentimental squelch in his chest − the stubborn idiocy and the absolute fucking gall of it, simply pure Vergil. For a second, he's there, his idiot of a twin, his glorious and terrible nerve. Eighteen and unyielding in his convictions, nineteen and ready to destroy even himself for them. He's missing his katana, his internal organs, his eyes, ear, almost two limbs, his memory, god knows what else, and this is what he offers, he and his undying pride. Dante loves him, fuck, wants to burst into hysterical laughter and even more useless tears and settles for crushing the handle of the bike hard enough that something snaps inside his hand.

“Tell me which way to go and I'll get us there.” He'll start with appealing to his reasoning and will continue with shameless begging if that's what he has to do to prevent him from committing sacrifice part two.

The sigh Dante anticipates never comes. He watches Vergil's trembling hand point toward the citadel and feels, for some reason, deflated. He doesn't want to see him fight now, he tells himself.

Okay, got to get through, or around.

“Here's a thought; let's go through the church and see if the road looks better on that side.” The streets are cluttered with these sack demons; they are as weak as expected, but there is a lot of them, and they really don't have time to waste. The best plan of action Dante can conjure up on his feet is to go through the biggest landmark around here; there has to be a backdoor or something, for fire security reasons if nothing else, and Vergil seems convinced it's the right direction anyway.

“The church?”

“Yeah, the church, the great big looming thing over there. Don't you see?”

“No,” Vergil replies, dry as ever. Shit. _Think_. But still −

“You've never been here before?” he asks, surprised.

“No,” Vergil replies.

Great. They're blinder than anticipated. He doesn't ask how the hell he's able to tell the location then.

This church is nowhere near gothic, but he gets a rash just by viewing it nevertheless. Religion and him just don't mix in general, he guesses; the god that never was was never on his side and isn't shy about showing it. The shape is kind of curious all over, nothing he's even seen used for a chapel. Surprise surprise; it looks just as washed out as everything surrounding it when it comes to the colors − even the stained-glass windows look fully transparent and clear at first sight. He stops looking for crosses when they reach the fountain that's lazily bubbling away in front of it.

This time Dante looks back when they walk away from the bike he's parked on top of the stairs leading to the main entrance. It's not a good move to leave it behind with or without the clothes in any stretch of imagination, but they aren't having an excess of relatively safe passageways here. Vergil is unsteady on his feet when he's helped down, but his expression prevents Dante from supporting him. The sound of soles on stone follows on his heels to the gateway, so it's good enough for current purposes.

When he pushes and opens the heavy, ornamental door made out of some dark fragrant wood and plenty of dedication, his apprehension picks up in intensity. It's too reminiscent of the portal Vergil mutilated himself for, which makes him run a check to confirm that he's got Rebellion safely tugged away. But instead of one twisted imitation of a soul, an empty vessel, there's this, well, swoosh of an overwhelming mass of individual voices suddenly trampling him down. Stupid word, but that's what it is, what he hears. He's been in the underworld so long that he only almost remembers what it's like to wander in crowded spaces; he does know it's not usually like this, a chanting choir cinching the edges of his mind in undulating unity. No, a gaggle of people in one place are a spasming cacophony and they pull his consciousness into a thousand different directions − outwards, not in. This is something else entirely.

He must have halted; Vergil steps to his side from the left and his hand brushes against his. Dante swallows and wonders which option the brother he thought he had would deny more emphatically: the touch being intentional or it being an accident, the last twitches and jerks of a falling, fading body.

The gate closes behind them more softly than expected and lets the shadows swallow them. No choice but walking forward. The back of his skull is still prickled by the demons wailing on the other side. They become quieter when he pushes himself to move.

Doesn't take many steps for them to meet the end of the corridor. Another door. A cheap metaphor for his life; never enough time to get used to the horrors the current room has thrown at him before another one forces him through its gaping maw. The chanting gets louder and louder the closer they get to it and he realizes it's not only ringing inside his head but also in his ears when the view of the room spreads open in front of him.

It's a church inside too. Of course it's a church and a sermon of sorts they end up crashing. Clearly religious, it's got the pews and the piety and plenty of pomp to prove that. But − that's not all there is to this building. The elevated space that's probably designed to catch one's attention reminds Dante of a different kind of stage than a pulpit. There are balconies, boxes, even an orchestra pit. A repurposed theatre?

It's difficult to concentrate on the finer details when the prayer pierces his consciousness like an angry, hot iron bar. The people, they are one voice with a plethora of heads that all repeat the same monotony of a melody like a more horrifying version of a Cerberus. They're so into it that no one seems to notice the two outsiders barging in, small mercies, maybe. Dante can't name the language − not Latin like you could expect from religious nuts, that's pretty much what he has to say about it. What he does know is the way it raises his hairs and makes them stand on edge in animal rejection. Goddamn, being surrounded by such an amount of Christian devotion makes his skin crawl.

Except --

No way. A bubble of hysteric laughter blossoms on his tongue. This is too funny, this is priceless, this must be him finally losing it for good.

Except − there is a huge white Sparda, the colossal statue black in the dim lighting that's only provided by some weakly glowing torches and chandeliers and faint daylight filtered through the windows on the ceiling, standing tall with a giant sword that's so nondescript it looks more like Rebellion than Sparda's own namesake propped in front of him, and Dante can already tell he's just going to love this phase. They've got a personal Jesus of their own, christ.

He actually does rub his eyes to dispel the illusion, but when he opens them again it's still there. It's not like Father to refuse to go away, bad characterization. The face is slightly off, a mixture of his true form and the human mask and some features from where the fuck ever, but there's no mistaking the ram horns when they're depicted even remotely correctly. Least they got the righteousness down.

So… It's a sizeable demon-worshipping cult they've stumbled upon and their false prophet just happens to be his maker? Not the most unbelievable occurrence he's ever witnessed, but it might fit into top ten anyhow. He's seen this shit before, but the sects he's been introduced to have been smaller and far less organized. Where they've failed, he thinks while he digests the sight, is that they've tried to burn and raze everything to the ground and even drowned it in salt to stop anything from the past ever sprouting again. These nutzos, though, they've built their sick little shrine on the fresh bones of the old ways. He sees it now; the icons are a replacement for old martyrs, these rites a warped image of Catholic traditions. It's so much easier to introduce new objects of worship on familiar foundations and brainwash people into doing something they've already been doing for generations than to force them to abandon everything and adopt alien rituals. Seems to have been very, very successful.

Well, relatively. So far, the cultists Dante's had the pleasure to run into have clustered into groups which could be measured in the fingers and toes their combined hands and feet hold. Doesn't take much to beat that. The entire village must have gathered here to listen to the sermons and it's impressive enough, but the most of them fit in the former parquet area. There are still rows upon rows of empty places on the sides and the back of the auditorium, like they have built a bigger and roomier place, a bigger and roomier city, than they really can afford. (Why are they building an altar out of their town?)

What's really sinister is not the number of people, it's how crazy they are, simply put. He can detect single manners and distinct thought patterns amongst the bulk, but they're all still tightly combined into an unholy amalgamation that unnerves him more than the possibility of receiving a burn from the holiness. The zealots are all wearing blank cowls and plain clothes that are far less kaleidoscopic than the bodies of the demons, apart from the altar-boy girl standing to the side in a flashier puffy dress, apart from the man of the hour in the middle. A priest of sorts, must be. Looks like a discount pope with all that white and gold and fancy robes − not just your regular, plain and modest alba but a posh dress with some intricate embroidery work all over the shimmering fabric and the golden cuffs of the sleeves. For fucks sake, the guy is wearing a red stola (blood, fire, confirmation, passion, martyrdom − all of Dante's sins made into a virtue) and a stupid hat with flappy earmuffs and a halo dangling on top of it. It truly is recycled Christianity; now that he thinks about it, there is even an organ blaring ominously in the distance. Fitting for the horror film about to unfold.

Speaking of which; speak of the devil −

There's also a demon here.

For a moment he's thrown off when he senses the acrid bite of pure nitrogen hit his lungs, but it's over almost instantly, the confusion is replaced by something else. This is where things get interesting, he predicts (it's a synonym for “fucked up”. Dante's expanding his vocabulary here).

This demon he knows.

Trish notices them just about instantly even from where she's lurking in the shadows, observing the floor from an abandoned balcony almost on the level of the ceiling with the dome and the skylight window. For a fraction of a moment, Dante can see her eyes widen in surprise, but she's quick to turn her gaze into a squinted glare. She makes an easily identifiable motion with her middle finger over her throat, killing two birds with one stone, and looks at him so piercingly that he's surprised to find his chest still intact. When the carol dies down in a final somber note and someone begins talking, her attention snaps back to the lectern. Well, that'll surely come to bite him in the ass at some point or another.

It's the old man speaking. Kind of amiable even with the planet-sized sanctimony radiating from him. He's spouting out something inconsequential and inaccurate about the barriers separating this world from the realm of darkness that Dante can't bother to pay any actual mind to. He's trying to swallow down the shock of running into a familiar face and pondering her reasons for attending when Trish drops in front of the geezer in an enviably smooth leap. Before anyone can even gasp, she pulls a gun out of thin air − a gun? that's _his_ freaking shotgun, he'd recognize that break-open hinge anywhere − and shoots him in the face, point blank. The man drops and a collective wave of dismayed noises travels through the audience. Someone screams, others join them, the choir-boy girl bursts into tears. The priest lies on the ground, his face a composition of minced meat and shredded skin. He's kind of bleeding a lot. It's red as well. Dante, too, tends to have a “shoot first, ask later” policy, so while this seems kind of excessive (seriously? this gauge for shooting someone's head off at such close quarters?), he guesses Trish must have her reasons. Doesn't concern him, anyway.

Trish switches the Coyote-A for her (formerly Sparda's, because that's just how these things go, his father piss marking every corner of his life from beyond his grave) girls swiftly when the guards, naturally dressed in more stylish white robes than the plebs, have collected their collective wits and start rushing to the scene of the crime, some of them yelling for reinforcements. Dante admires her accuracy for a couple of snazzy headshots until he realizes they'd better hurry before the church is swarmed.

He turns − he does that way too much these days − and finds Vergil slumped against a bench. Still conscious; he makes a “nnn” sound when he's pulled up and hanged up on Dante's shoulder from the armpit. They start scrambling towards a door Dante takes for an exit, no handy signs here, in a four-legged fumble. He hears panicking people run out and more guards enter in the background.

“Dante,” Trish calls, sounding absolutely livid. He winces and looks back out of guilt.

She's gotten herself a new haircut, a short sharp bob that emphasizes her jawline or something. Still wearing some black BDSM-gear corset thing as a top, he sees. It brings out her tits in a slightly uncomfortable way. Dante's all for the emancipation of the women and all that jazz, he's even paid for that shit when you take the skin mags into account − and it's not like he'd really have any room to judge when he spent his youth in revealing clothing himself −, but seeing that she's a copy of Mom, it's naturally awkward. Apparently, there's a line even in his depravity and tendency for (quasi)incest because yeah, there's nothing there. Is this how he's supposed to react to a naked sibling, he wonders while dodging a chair that comes flying his way, too close for comfort.

“Hi, Trish, long time no see! Would love to chat but we're kinda in a hurry here, so we'll just leave you to it. Adios!”

A furious, crackling crop of electricity singes the ends of his hair. Yikes. She hasn't changed during his absence.

“Fuck you, Dante,” she hollers while crushing the windpipe of some unfortunate guard under her heel. “We'll have a talk about this later!” He agrees to her threat with a tilt of his head that she probably doesn't even see.

He misses the “We?” she shouts at him a moment later, the question drowning in the general chaos.

“There is a part-demon here,” Vergil's raspy voice informs him unexpectedly. Dante considers informing him of Trish's presence, but something tells him it's not her he means. Even if he's forgotten about her, their instincts should tell him there's nothing partly demonic about the woman in question.

“If it isn't doing anything to us right now, I don't give a fuck. This way!” he says and guides them through a door that does turn out to be an exit.

The day is pretty and bright and full of demons, still. “This the right way?” he asks while clearing the road from the pests. Vergil answers with affirmative silence.

On they go. He stops paying attention to their surroundings, focusing only on the body next to him, if it can keep up and for how long.

His arm has to get progressively lower and lower as Vergil's posture keeps getting more and more hunched until there's a violent tug downwards and the poise crumbles, forcing Vergil to cling to his shirt in order to stay up. When Dante has secured his hold on his side and happens to glance down to their feet, he sees his entire right foot is missing, just the stump of his ankle that's making it kind of possible for him to go on walking. There's a white line behind them continuing in the distance, the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel, Ariadne's string. It tells something about him, about them, that he hasn't even made a sound to let him know. That it's taken Dante this long to notice. What an excellent summary.

He's too war-weary to think anything else of it. Or to admit that he does.

Ah, here's finally an advertising sign, he notes idly while they drag themselves forward again, Vergil partly hopping and party leaning down on the stump. The main headlines of some local newspaper, judging by the colors and the formatting. Something about it catches his attention. The main piece spells out this and that about abominations and he reads it and blinks and reads again. Gay marriage legalized in the region, it essentially proclaims, although with less flattering terms and turns of phrase.

How − here, of all places? The last he heard, it was possible in only a couple of countries and there wasn't any public discussion of it in this side of the world at all. It's clear that the folks here aren't happy about the decision being out of their hands, but the legalization must've had some support in order to have happened in the first place. What the hell (what a stupid thing to notice) −−

The whiplash of the news is fun enough, but there's a distant rational bell clanging in his cerebrum that makes him fix his eyes on the top of the page, the yellow bar running on the border. They usually put the date there. Passing laws usually take time, that's the impression he's got, and he's got this creeping, icy doubt trickling down his back. He looks at the date.

It's summer. He knows that, feels that in the sweat slicking his neck and gluing the shirt onto his skin.

It's Sunday. That confirms what he suspected distantly, that all the people living on the outskirts had made their way here to attend the mass and that's why they avoided running into angry house owners earlier, that's why the streets are so lifeless (well, partly, still doesn't explain the other peculiarities associated with them).

Then there's the year. That − oh. The ink doesn't change shapes at his shocked double take.

It has been ten years.

Since he died, he killed him, he descended −

“There is a facility. “

Dante's attention snaps back to him in an instant. It's not the words that do it; instead, there's this serious intent bleeding into them, and when Dante has to point out that Vergil's acting serious, things are well past snafu.

“Where? In the fortress? Is Yamato there? We'll get you there, no doubt about that, don't you worry, but I could really use some directions -“

“Dante,” Vergil interrupts.

“Under,” he says and collapses.

He does scream out of frustrated desperation this time. It doesn't make it any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, I'm really excited for the following chapters now.


	13. xiii. Physics to a Corpse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Forgot to mention about the Sparda statue and the sword it is holding in game and in chapter 12: I realize it's actually the Force Edge, but I remember seeing it and thinking dumbly “wow, Sparda the devil arm is really looking rough these days” way back when DMC 4 came out, so I just had to make Dante inherit my confusion.)
> 
> Anyway, here's Wonderwall.

It's the current day in the current year. Vergil falls and it's not raining. Dante's eyes are dry and clear when he kneels down to pick him up, hating being so unsurprised. The hair he sweeps behind the remaining ear while at it feels clean enough to squeak and creak, but in some way it's still dull and coarse and lifeless, a dim and clouded piece of polished metal. This is getting to be a habit, his body has developed a routine. Dante feels nothing when his former clone remains limp and passive when prodded for a reaction, the verbal bitch slaps and careful poking mostly carried out due to a sense of obligation and not because of actual hope. His sight is clear and it feels bleary, distanced from life.

Vergil's head slumps on the arms holding him up, one behind his back and the other supporting the legs in a poor imitation of a pieta. His media literacy is what it is, but the impression he gets is the following: in popular culture, the position is supposed to underline how mighty and robust the one carrying the damsel in distress is (he won't touch the romantic implications because fuck that noise, he's troubled enough as it is). What a joke. “Without strength, you cannot protect anything,” Vergil said the first time they met on Temen-ni-gru when Dante was yanking Yamato out of his chest with a fever-violent motion and rapidly losing blood and track on how comprehensively everything was going to hell. “Let alone yourself,” he said, neatly slashing Dante's palm open when he tried to prevent him from taking his half of the amulet; the betrayal stung more than the slash. It was the right hand on that occasion, a premonition of the events to come, and Dante has since gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid analyzing why the skin on that one was intact when he woke up smelling the blood of the sibling he had slain ten years later, how he could apparently forgive him anything, disappearing and reappearing as if nothing had ever happened, stealing, trying to kill him for such a stupid thing, anything but dying on him. Vergil was wrong. There's no strength in this, in going through the motions; yet his curse is to always save his physical self from ruin anyway, unintentionally, never mind that it's not what's worth protecting.

Where Vergil was right, however, was when he mentioned bright ideas earlier; Dante is wasting their time by dicking around with this walking thing, no matter how justified his impulse to drag them forward on foot may have seemed due to the exhaustion and mind fog and the common chaos. He should've suggested flying much earlier, true, demanded it and ignored the objections his brother's hurt honor might have hurled at him. Should've, but tired as he is, formulating such a coherent plan of action would've been well beyond him. He's only realizing flying is an opportunity because of being reminded of the first time he triggered, for fuck's sake. With no idea of the direction it wouldn't have made a difference anyway, he tells himself to avoid throwing away even more time by self-flagellating and disemboweling himself on this very street. There's no guarantee that it'll go any better now: a small nagging note in his stream of consciousness reminds him he has no idea what they're facing and that's why going out of his way to spend a lot of energy on mere traveling is a risky maneuver. Let it rant − now that it's just him in his splendid isolation, there's no one to listen to the voice of reason.

Vergil is doing less than stellar and there is a mouthful of words Dante would like to spew out at him. What he does is change shapes and take flight.

He soars up high quickly to get a more precise grasp on the direction than Vergil's blind hand pointing. It's best to keep relatively close to the ground while travelling: the higher he gets, the colder the air becomes and the more difficult it is to breathe. Vergil doesn't do breathing or sensing things any longer − that doesn't mean he can't be harmed by this stuff, though. (Passing through a cloud is a miserable, wet experience anyway.)

The island is bigger than he imagined from the size of its probably most civilized part; just how long is the wall circling it or does it merely cut off somewhere in random? They're hovering too low for him to be able to see the entirety of the isle, but it's pretty obvious it doesn't stop at the range of mountains rising towards the sky in somewhat immediate distance. It takes him a while, it's difficult to detect and he considers getting higher up for a moment, but there it is − he spots a couple of white towers mingling in the middle of steep, snow-clad peaks. Fortuna castle, a facility, Yamato, almost within his reach. If Vergil wasn't completely lethargic, he might feel cautiously hopeful. It's there and so close and they've come so far − and it may already be for nothing, too much, a drawn-out swan song indeed.

(Maybe, just maybe, this is him shutting down to save power and not anything more sinister. He finishes the thought with a wry imaginary laugh. He feels schizophrenic, not buying his own lies. There goes another crutch.)

Target located, it's time for him to go.

Darkness falls soon after; it creeps upon them when they've just left the last of the ramshackle buildings behind and entered the wilds − meaning rocks upon rocks, dark soil, hardly any plants aside from a scrubby spruce here and there. It's okay: the liveliness of a rain forest might floor him after hanging out in the void of Argosax's Hell. The lingering aroma of iron and rotten eggs tells him the same story than the acid yellow mud sand does: it's mining area, at least has been. It never stops being a bit freaky but also kind of cool to be able to see in the dark. Weird that it's already here. He thought all the sermons and stuff took place well before noon, but it seems that the good people of Fortuna like to sleep in on Sundays. In addition, he's lost his sense of time and ability to glean info like the time from his surroundings.

(For better or worse, this will be resolved before sunrise.)

Suddenly, when they're above a relatively small cluster of mountain peaks, the leg Dante has been mostly holding onto vanishes in a heartbeat. One − it's there as a boneless pipe of ice skim in a grip that has the delicateness of an icebreaker. He's too afraid of shattering it to wonder why it isn't melting under the heat of his pining. Two − the leg is no longer, his hand is fumbling for the leg of his trousers and meets merely cotton and what passes for Vergil's flesh these days on the hip, no thigh, no shin. His hold on him becomes shaky and he can't seem to fix it when he's this stampeded − his hands stumble as if he's been hitting the bottle again, which he hasn't, which actually might contribute to this hassle and instability too. Vergil is threatening to slip from his arms, his brain is drawing short and paralyzing his fingers. He can't rebalance him like this.

“I got to get you down, ahh, damn, got to − fuck − get down,” he keeps repeating while flying towards the ground, trying to find a level site with no sharp ridges poking out.

Dante makes a graceless landing as soon as he discovers a relatively open space and, by some rare stroke of luck, manages to slide his footless and now half legless brother on the dirt without damaging his last mostly intact limb (only missing some digits!) or seemingly any other part. His spine is trembling - he wants to scream − he attempts to steady his body but it's not listening − he only stills somewhat when Vergil moves.

Vergil, once again slumped into a heap of pooling fabric and rough white plaster, turns his head and faces the darkened sky blindly, desolate. It's a novel thing now to see him that animate. Wild.

“Can't I just, I don't know, use Rebellion again to recharge you?” he says in the middle of some deep breathing exercises. They're hard to learn properly when you need the air less than actual humans but strictly speaking lack the fucks and instinct for self-preservation and thus run a high risk for asphyxia. Yoga is also hard if attempted in the middle of a panic attack, it seems.

It's not something he expects to get an answer to, just some idle notion that might sound a tad hysterical. Trying to uphold a conversation, even one composed of rhetorical questions and general one-sided swearing, seems like the polite thing to do, though. As if he's now someone to have manners. Look, he's acknowledging Vergil's apparently not a total vegetable yet! In addition, Dante would like to know if his less and less latent desire to grab his sword and run it through him is a product of his wishful thinking or if it is some dark, humane side of him that just longs for a final mercy kill.

“No. The body consumes energy too quickly. The only feat you could accomplish would be making a hole through which it would run out even more rapidly.” The tone he uses at the end sounds like an audible form of him closing his eyes. Dante has a feeling waking up isn't going to be a number Vergil will perform ad nauseam in the future. When he calls his name, he doesn't reply, only twitches mildly when Dante gathers him again and falls right back into the same old unbreakable stupor. Here's to hoping this instant hibernation doesn't trigger the little gift Mundus left him.

Sadly, the quasi explanation makes some sense, so he can't put the dismissal of his idea down to a bout of delirious rambling. Vergil can't heal, not at all or not quickly enough to make a difference. If he's stabbed and imbued with his essence (any dirty connotations here are unfortunate and unwelcome, Dante swears), he'll die from the shock before the current of it even hits him. Seems that the power-up was a one-time thing and not a continuous drain, a jury-rigged IV type of crap, damn it. So be it, he'll step on it.

(He quells the urge to project his old words back at him and retort something along the lines of “Not very classy for someone's dying words”. Doesn't want to make it reality but can't help thinking if that's precisely what they are. Then there's the looming danger of good-for-nothing introspection he's trying his best to hide from: what, exactly, does he want to hear from him as the one final au revoir? That Vergil's sorry, that he gives a shit about him? Yeah, how about no. He doesn't know how he'd be supposed to go on from that and he wouldn't buy it in any case.

What _does _Dante want?)

He's opening his wings up for the takeoff when there's a flicker in the air. For crying out loud -- The night around them undulates with it before stilling in anticipation. He isn't sure if it's a sound or the impact of something physical crashing into another thing or something else completely, but it's somehow clear it comes from above. But that's not all there is to it, naturally, and this feeling of being watched by something innocuous and evil he does recognize. When, against his first instinct of aiming his gaze upwards, he turns to look back, it's there again. Why wouldn't it be.

The bike stands alone in the corridor the ruined houses form, and even when Dante knows it's impossible for this time of day (rather, night) and that it doesn't actually happen, there's this sense of a gloomy light glowing behind it like a setting sun, like a failing giant star. It observes them silently from the distance and paints an unnaturally long shadow on the ground that's already shrouded in them.

Dante − he's overtaken by the upset awareness of his childhood nights. This time, he's outside in the darkness with the thing prowling on him and while his eyes perceive the shape, he has no clue what the non-presence replacing his nightmares with the gnawing inside his head is. This time, Vergil won't set his anxiety free with a snatch of poetry. (He refuses to believe he won't wake up at least once, just to bestow a final Latin proverb at him.)

Still: better the devil you know and so on. He pushes the chopper out of his mind (it's akin to pushing his brains out, but it's doable) and ends up being mostly successful in paying it none of his attention by turning to face the unknown lurker instead. Maybe it'll go away if he ignores it. Don't need it anymore, there are more urgent matters he ought to give a damn about. It's a free country, it can do whatever it wants.

When he looks over the shambles of abandoned hovels around them, he sees a rocky cliff rise above the ground, and on it, a tall black rectangle of smooth stone. It's got some scribbles breaking the even surface, though, could be runes, and it stands on four heavy feet that form curvy slopes on the base, marked by more intricate etchings. The way the ground starts to shake beneath it is entirely unnecessary: it's clearly of demonic origin and Dante wasn't born yesterday.

It was all going too smoothly anyway.

The thing that initially caught his attention materializes a breath later; bright little sparks of fire glimmer into view and bring along them the reek of brimstone and acrid sulphur. Before he's able to command it to stop fucking around and to get on with it, the middle of the edifice starts to bubble with a lava-like substance that bursts out in an explosion of a frothing curtain of flames − and there it is, the demon, leaping in front of them with much more agility and gravitas than a creature of its weight is supposed to possess. It roars and flexes its admittedly ample muscles and sets the buildings of the deserted mining camp or whatever on fire in a fit of pointlessly dramatic aggression.

So there's a Minotaurus-like fire demon in his way again, except this ox might well be the real deal unlike the counterfeit he offed in Vie de Marli. Stinks like an old devil at least, has the bearing of one as well. It's oxen, yeah, but its mom definitely had a thing with a centaur and, judging by the mane, maybe a lion too. Always nice to meet other mongrel bastards. They should form a club.

“The infamous son of Sparda, I recognize your scent. I am Berial, the conqueror of Fire Hell,” it bellows its literally enkindling introduction. Aww. If that's the case, his bath was for naught.

“I'm flattered. Kind of rude to address the little old me only when I've got company, though.” There must be something wrong with his brain that prevents him from being able to resist dumb banter with his foes. It's unclear if the damage in question is related to the one that makes him hopelessly attracted to someone he's very much related to himself. At least this defect has some advantages attached to it: he begins to draw Rebellion out while speaking, and judging by the fact the talking walking bovine isn't attacking him on the instant, his inadvertent bluff appears to be working.

“But what is that _thing_ with you?”

“What, the bike? Hell if I know. It's not even with me, I dumped it and it decided to stalk me like a jealous ex, what a creep.”

“No, that… Thing.” It sounds baffled. “The wounded, nonviable one.”

“_What_? The elder son of Sparda, and he's not nonviable, he's just restin-- You know what, fuck you. Don't have the time for pleasantries anyhow, so I'll just wipe you out straight away,” Dante snarls and assumes a hostile position with his weapon at the ready. To hell with this.

The demon isn't intimidated.

“Is it, now? I cannot smell it and the resonance is dying. It does not look like much, either,” it notes and swishes its tail interestedly. Another building catches fire. Dante smells nothing but Vergil's chopped-off arm burning in the pyre he built for him.

“_Fuck you_, “ he reiterates with feeling. He's lost the ability to tell and care about which feeling it is, but it feels like it melts his molars and he needs to spit the residue somewhere.

“Prince Mundus broke it, did he not? It is a shame I did not get to witness that: it would be glorious to see such a prideful creature fall. I wonder if it screamed,” Berial says, its voice rather contemplative despite rumbling in a way reminiscent of a volcano erupting. It twirls the flaming Zweihänder in amusement and that's it, that's all he can take.

Dante rushes at it unseeingly, blood pounding in his ears and coloring his vision in swimming red.

Kill.

Maim.

A blissful quiet mind.

“Come back to fight me once you have had it fixed. I will avenge my compatriots slain by your sword _later_,” it retorts in an almost playful manner and makes a great leap backwards. Dante's poor head is giving off too much smoke to wonder if “his sword” means just a sword of his (Rebellion? The Force Edge, which is actually joint property and not just his?) or his and possibly his deadbeat dad's booming demon killing business more broadly.

“What, no, wait, I'll fucking _kill you now _and be done with you this instant, you fuck --,” Dante cries out and lunges at the demon with the familiar bitterness of desperation bleeding into his mouth and Rebellion scorching in his hand. He revels in the abrupt bloodlust. It is uncomplicated, sits well with his clumsy hands and reckless desires. Simplicity. This is the closest he's gotten to a genuine feeling in a long long time.

A child's reaction − he can disrespect him all he wants himself, but if someone else states Vergil is weak, which he is, he apparently takes offence. Dante is the only one allowed to insult him, just as Fate seems to have decided him to be the only one allowed to deliver the killing blow.

Demons, at least those with any semblance of a functional mind capable of producing speech and asinine observations, tend to be highly attuned to them being such special snowflakes. Take Beowulf for an example; the asshole seemed obsessed about their scent to the degree of having developed a complex, or a particularly vehement fetish (Whatever happened to the poor thing exactly? He distinctly remembers it boasting of hunting him down for all eternity, but it apparently got lost along the way and made a reappearance as a nasty devil arm. Vergil must've done quite the number on it, but how their meeting came about he hasn't the faintest of.). Not a lot of demons have seen the wonder twins and even fewer have lived to tell the tale, but every goddamned high demon he's ever run into has felt the need to run their mouth and to comment on his likeness to Sparda. Must be the blood, the smell, and now this piece of shit here claims it can't detect it. It's troubling and Dante must distract himself even when the same sentiment has been slinking around inside of his skull: that he's essentially lugging around an inflatable plastic doll that reeks merely of whatever his grubby hands have been rubbing on its surface.

“I would make haste if I were you,” Berial says before the blade manages to hit the cooled blackened magma that makes up its body, before it erupts into glimmers and shreds of fire. They dance around him briefly in a distinctly mocking gesture before getting sucked back into the monolith. The surface sizzles for one last time and then silence evens out the night again.

Dante brings down the last building standing with one vicious swing of Rebellion and exhales deeply. So that was that.

After the adrenaline rush, his hands are steadier again. He chooses not to read anything into it.

Vergil is still where he was left (at which point he put him down he doesn't remember), still phlegmatic and as graceful as a trash bag when picked up.

He doesn't throw a glance backwards, just spreads his wings and leaves.

\---

After that, the terrain changes quickly in tandem with the altitude. The wind is harsh and he almost hears pine needles screaming. Under different circumstances, the snowing would be a nice change to their usual rain motif. It's a great little throwback to their rendezvous at the top of the tower anyhow: here they are again, high above the ground level, the skies pouring down on them. Since Dante has nothing to distract himself with if observing Vergil's big sleep doesn't count − and it doesn't, because it's mainly what he needs to have the distraction for −, he cannot stop the memory that runs over him with the weight and subtlety of a freight train.

After an epic throwdown that didn't lead to anything other than some ancient statues getting broken and Dante's pants growing painfully tight, the pressure inside him was stronger than the one bursting out of him when being impaled on his own fucking sword (maybe it was a good thing that the hideous old man Vergil hanged out with decided to play a round of cockblocking and took Vergil with him before Dante could get his hands on him, trembling with the angry pained aroused vigor of going through baby's first trigger). There was something off about Vergil, a cold fury radiating from him and distorting his moves with imprecisions, brashness, but it was undeniably him, rough and breathtaking. They were both soaked and panting and he was so keyed up, so elated, living. When his brother caught his bullets with Yamato and laid them down in a neat line only to send them back at him, he was more than halfway ready to just fall back and spread his legs open for him, no matter how pissed off the whole ordeal made him at the same time. Or he was so close because he was so riled up, who knows. (And what if he spent most of the day flirting so recklessly openly that he's still mortified decades later, all that talk about giving him a kiss and inviting Vergil to come and get a piece of him? He blames the lack of oxygen in his brain cells. He's nevertheless jerked off to the fictional universe where Vergil took the bait and then him way too often and may even have accidentally conditioned himself to react to the burning shame. Hard to test that hypothesis now when his insides are taken over by a black hole.) Vergil got into the expected, tired tirade about Sparda's power and Dante's unwillingness to sacrifice everything (him) for a mad goose chase for it, which he had to cut short by blundering out something childish about not having a father and not liking Vergil himself that much either. It was true, the former one, the latter, him disliking his twin, being a more difficult statement to pin down. Sparda may have sired him, but he took none of the responsibility belonging to him because of it.

As for the second account − well, could be true as well. Vergil isn't an easy person to like and Dante also really, really fucking hates him and his guts.

Apropos: Vergil shows no signs of being aware of the weather. He's been as pale as anything could get from the get-go, and it could be that the roughness of his skin isolates some of the freeze. Or − this is what Dante would like to evade − it could be that he doesn't feel anything at all, cold, warmth, pleasure, wetness, hunger. He clearly experienced pain when he had eyes to burst and fluids to regurgitate, even back when he did the amputation thing, but he took the most recent losses of his body parts without blinking an eye, so to speak. He wonders, not that he would still be doing it, if he could notice Dante pressing their faces together. Always wanting to take advantage.

Dante knows he's wasting some energy by keeping his body heat high to combat some of the effects of the frost. He can take a bit of discomfort in the form of freezing his balls off, sure; he wouldn't be doing it if it weren't for this cargo, which maybe has to spend a little less of its own resources to keep it from being turned into an icicle this way. This excursion will cost Vergil extra, so it's almost a relief when they're past the last bullshit rock formation and stand before the fortress, at long last.

As far as architecture goes, this castle is located far more stably in the “uncomfortably familiar” territory than the church slash opera house. This is not Mallet island, but he is island-hopping and looking at high arches and spires all the same. He misses continents, firm ground.

Under them lies a long bridge, connecting the path he has been following for some time to the fortress. Dante barely spares it a glance, focusing on the foundations of the castle. Got to be a way to get down under.

Doesn't seem to be anything but solid stone around, though. Scanning a side, he discovers there are seemingly no convenient entrances to a secret lair hiding beneath the large building. The wind, getting real pesky now, wafts a cloud of powdery snow on them. Vergil doesn't react when it sprawls on his face. The small crystals don't have to decency to melt and make Dante feel better −− Vergil looks like a corpse he's unearthing from the snowbed.

Good that they managed to miss the worst of the blizzard on their journey here. If only could he find the fu−−

“Dan-- Dante?” someone calls from the direction of the bridge. It takes a while for him to connect the bright voice to a name.

“_And what would _you _know about family?_” she cries somewhere in the back of his mind and still makes him flinch a decade later. Trust a gunslinger to see beneath his happy-go -lucky veneer and hit the vulnerable patches under the bravado.

Seems that the two women have switched hair stylists: whereas Trish has had her cropped pretty short at some point, Lady's usual updo has been grown out so that her locks reach the small of her back. At least the familiar fringe is still there, although cut into a neater line to frame her face. He mainly detects this because it has been solidified into an icy veil over her forehead. Her cheeks burn red in the biting breeze, but when she gets closer to them in a brisk jog, he sees a hint of delicate lines unraveling around her mouth and eyes, creased in fury. Shouldn't be surprising that she looks different now than she did ten years ago, that she's aged from a frankly terrifying girl but a girl nonetheless into a proper woman during that time.

That's not what really catches his attention, though. The more acute topic occupying his mind is wondering how on earth hasn't she frozen to death in her current outfit. He'd bet on Trish using her powers to insulate the clothes somehow; then again, the Lady he knew might have rather lost her limbs to winter if the alternative meant having to deal with anything demonic that wasn't Trish, Dante or the blood of her slain enemies touching her. As it is, she's visibly uncomfortable and cold and yet alive.

The dress, though. It's… a lot. He says this as someone who has (has had) an aversion towards wearing shirts and pants that aren't skinny enough to mess with his circulation. The design is − busy, with all the conflicting colors slapped on white and gold, a far cry from her normal penchant for more understated shades. Orange strings crossing the cleavage and stomach area; deep turquoise feathers perching on the shoulders as flamboyant and no doubt unpractical epaulets; lace and shiny fabric and grayish leather in a merry, garish mélange of an ensemble. Okay, those things he can put down to it being a disguise or a change in her eye for fashion (Vergil has proven how easy it is to go blind, after all). Actually, now that he's thought of it, it kind of resembles the attire the guards, the man whose brains Trish blew out and the shrill-voiced girl wore during the mass, only the piousness has really taken a hit or then one of the sacraments of this cult is virgin sacrifice. The camouflage theory is given some credibility by her lugging around a weapon other than Kalina Ann; it's a white rifle he doesn't recognize, surprisingly basic for something she'd be carrying.

Still doesn't explain the, well, porniness. Not like she ever had a thing for wearing actual pants as far as Dante knows. But. It's nevertheless risqué for any of the three of them, the demon hunters that some had mistaken for different kind of freelancers for all the bare midriffs and busts. It occurs to him that it's hypocritical of him to badmouth her like a puritan when he's standing in front of her technically naked, once again fondling the object of his sick fantasies bridal style. The scales help the matter a bit.

But none of this matters now and everything will matter a whole lot less if his brother kicks the bucket today.

“Yeah, it's me. There's no time for explanations 'cause I need to get to Yamato _now_, before Vergil here croaks. You got any idea how to get under the castle?” he blurts out rapid-fire before she can voice any of the confusion he sees simmering under her expression. His tone must belie his desperation because Lady doesn't pose any further questions even when Vergil's name with a question mark is clearly burning on her frost-gnawn lips. Eyeing the bundle on his arms with an equal measure of curiosity and repulsion, she replies: “Yes, it's through the main hall. I'll show you.” He appreciates the professionalism. One of them has to have a shred of class.

She treks through the drift of snow in an impressively steady manner, considering her high heels. He follows her, his spine stooped over his burden in an attempt to minimize Vergil's exposure to the cold.

“I've never been there, but I know there's a lab beneath this place and that there's a hidden entrance over here,” Lady says while prying the heavy and likely somewhat frozen door open. That's more than he's got, so he lets her lead him inside.

They enter a large hall. He's losing the count on how many churches he's visited on this goddamn trip when he regularly goes out of his way to steer clear of them. This is a basic model: the benches, some pillars, devout atmosphere ingrained into the stone.

Lady weaves her way between the pews. “I know it's here, I just don't know what it is. Doesn't your demon blood tell where the door is hidden?”

“Nope,” he answers while kicking down a flimsy iron fence on his way to the platform at the front. There's a weird bulky piece of metal standing in the middle of it, vaguely shaped like a mushroom if you don't count the spikes and the Sparda horns on top. Fucking cultists. Probably a candleholder or something as lame as that. He hops over it to the second floor and only realizes he's still in full demon mode when he uses his wings to balance his descent. Better to switch off and save some gas. He hears Lady mutter something like “useless”. Agreed.

This part of the room is mostly characterized by the humongous, wall-size painting of the old codger Trish did in. Kinda boring as far as portraits of megalomaniacs go: no scepters or thrones for this savior. There's this weird sense of the space appearing smaller than what it feels like. “Okay, Dante: if you were to hide a secret entrance in a room with a great deal of nothing and a giant-ass picture of yourself, where would you place it?” he mumbles, possibly to either Vergil or Lady's benefit. With a fluent little swing, he's drawn Rebellion from its confines and makes a measuring test strike against the surface by swinging it lazily and stopping just before the tip grazes the picture, Vergil tucked on one arm against his armpit. What if −

He hits the painting.

The blade cuts through canvas and wood just as expected. It was more like a love tap than a real punch, really. However; should've been enough to topple any regular wall. This one is curiously thick for a non-bearing one.

“What was that, did you find it?” Lady inquires from below. She's so eager to help there must be something she's after, there's got to be something she wants for herself in the facility. Hell if he gives a damn as long as it gets them to Yamato.

“Maybe. Care to come up here for a sec?”

She's quick about it. Got to be worth a lot of money.

“Here, can you hold him for a minute? He's not heavy,” he asks without waiting for a reply, already shoving Vergil on her arms while in the middle of his first sentence. If he does it quickly and nonchalantly enough, he doesn't have to stop and estimate if he trusts her enough not to drop him. Dante is making tricking himself into not thinking about things like that into an art form here.

This time he grips his broadsword with two hands and puts his back into it. No test runs this time: Rebellion meets bullseye with a good amount of force and noise. The impact vibrates through his arms and it dawns on him that maybe it'd be smart to draw back because the wall is coming down. Come down it does: the entire thing collapses upon itself as if deflating. The man in white wails in the way the wooden frame creaks and screaks until he's only dust in stale air.

Oops. Vandalizing church property on this fine evening; Lady won't be the only one issuing invoices after today's adventure. Which one of the ten commandments does that break again? Dante has a bad track record with those. Let's have a count:

1\. _Thou shalt have no other gods before me_. Also, something something about_ graven images, _Sunday school wasn't exactly yesterday. Well, the current Vergil is an almost literal pillar of salt because of him. Vergil, more broadly, is his golden calf, his idol of a false god. His religion.

2\. _Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain_. He didn't have parents to weed the habit out of him and Vergil didn't stay around long enough to shovel soap into his mouth either.

3\. _Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy_. The only thing he's hallowing is his drinking ritual, which, if successful, makes him lose count of the days anyway. Him renovating the church illicitly on Lord's day is probably frowned upon as well.

4\. _Honor thy father and thy mother_. As said: he has no father, just a sex cell donator that has never even paid alimony. And his mother he didn't price highly enough not to let her die. If that's honor, he wants nothing to do with it.

5\. _Thou shalt not murder_. This one is self-explanatory. If demons are for some reason free game, then he's also got humans, animals and close kin under his belt, hanging stuffed on the walls of his mental trophy room. An additional argument could be made about the killing of self if he's to get down to details.

6\. _Thou shalt not commit adultery_. He's fairly certain his perpetual virginity doesn't protect him from sodomy. If the things he has imagined doing with another man don't land him a place in Hades, nothing will. He wants to do dirty, dirty things to his brother (lying with a man like one does with a woman? something like that) and has consumed a shit ton of pornography as well. Doesn't self-pollution count too? Jackpot with this one.

7\. _Thou shalt not steal_. Dante is a thief. He steals any weapons he finds lying around; vials of holy water; money; old coupons; other people's time and nerves. Vergil's moments of weakness; Vergil against him in the sand, shaking. Small stolen moments, confabulation with a real fake.

8._ Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor_. Dante is a liar. Unlike Vergil who is dishonest only by omitting crucial pieces of intel (or was, maybe was, now it's impossible to say), he lies about everything, about stupid little things and fundamental parts of his character. He lies to his business partners, his clients, the man serving him bad vodka at the bar, himself. Usually without any motivation at all, mindlessly − an unreliable narrator by nature and nurture.

(He's lied to Vergil too. When they met at eighteen in the rainfall; truly realizing there was no coming back home when he saw his wide mouth warped out of its shackles and spitting out his answer to Dante's misspeaking, declaration of missing him. _Is this something you take pride in? You are throwing away Father's blood, debasing yourself and your lineage, denying your very nature_. Sometimes, he still notices his lips finding the shape of his own words. He has little regret to spare after his actions just before Vergil's fall into the netherworld, but at times a quiet hollowness still blooms inside his chest. _So yeah, I missed you. But you know what I miss even more? Being sure, being able to trust things. I was happier with you dead − and now you just come back and think I'll wait with open arms for you to fuck up everything I've_ _scraped together_ _for myself in ten years? You didn't want to be a part of my life: stay the fuck away from it_.)

9\. _Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, wife, slaves, animals or anything else_. It's what happens when none of the things he wants are his and he wants none of the things he has. (Isn't this exactly the same shit as tenet number seven?)

10\. ??? Is he forgetting something? His paternosters are rusty these days. He's awful at this, isn't he?

Well, sacrilege or not, they're onto something now.

“You weren't joking about the weight,” Lady says while she hoists Vergil back to him like a wet rag, her awkward discomfort shining through even though Dante avoids meeting her eyes. He owes her. “He isn't breathing.”

“Yeah.” Yeah, he knows. That's all he's giving her now.

They make quick progress of going through the newly opened doorway and rushing down the short set of stairs they find on the other side of the wall. Past them, they arrive at an ornamental entrance that's surrounded by lit torches and a couple of cages which are empty but have the aura of having had some less fortunate creatures die in them some time or other. The room has been in use recently then; might as well take it as a good omen. Lady opens the door, her gun at the ready, before Dante can wax poetical about its PTSD-triggering properties. Good.

A hallway − rust, grating, steaming and whizzing pipes. Dante and Lady's steps echo loudly; should there be someone on the other side, they sure know they're coming.

Vergil, on the other hand, is still… Vergil is. It has to suffice.

Shortly, their merry band of devils and devil bashers meets the end of the road. The tunnel takes them to the edge of a chasm. The shaft is deep but not deep enough that he couldn't make the jump in his regular form − peeking into it, he can see the bottom of it, a huge blade of a fan spinning under a metal grate that's dubbing the floor.

Lady measures the depth and reaches the same conclusion. “Help me down?” she asks. Dante hunches so she can climb on his back. She does it pretty nimbly for someone with thigh-high heels and a dress tighter than skin. He's glad for deciding to wear a shirt since she doesn't seem to be wearing any bike shorts or much underwear anyway this time. Maybe he really is a raging homosexual; or then these are the sort of platonic feelings and modesty he's expected to have about his twin again, he just can't tell. Lady ties her ankles around him and clings to his neck even though she still exudes seriously pissed off vibes. They've both really come a long way from her shielding herself from contact with his body and him feeling the compulsion to mock her by trying to hit on her, but they've also paid a heavy price for it.

(“_And what would _you _know about family?_”

_He doesn't_ _ask what she knows when he sees her dark puffy eyes over the rim of his glass. What he wants to ask is if she tastes the cinder of Temen-ni-gru on her palate too. He doesn't._ _She passes out on his floor and never leaves, not even when he burns it down with the rest of the office and even though she never actually lives with him._)

Having checked his hold on his twin is secure, he steps over into the abyss. For a moment it feels like he wouldn't mind if they never reached the ground or outlasted the landing; inside his head he's still viscerally alone, but the figment of it all ending with two souls circling around his is pleasant. He swears out loud when he makes the landfall with wobbling knees: fucking borrowed shoes with their thin fucking soles. Lady huffs and peels herself free. Her shoes click steadily to the next exit in the middle of what seem to be generators of sorts, a lot of them. A good sign, Dante thinks, for finding a lab − fancy equipment likely demands plenty of electricity.

At first it appears they've found themselves at a dead end: the cul-de-sac is cylinder-shaped and covered in copper, more patina-green than reddish brown. It looks like some nerd's idea of a cool steampunk vessel or whatever with the elaborately decorated vents and general artsiness. Not much room for larping or anything else, though: the wall opposite of them is a large circle with cogwheel-like teeth splitting it in half and can be reached with a couple of paces.

If the mountain doesn't come to the prophet, there's always dynamite.

They don't even have to look at each other; after all these years, his dumb bullheadedness remains as tightly intertwined into hers as ever. Lady inhales and Dante shifts the convalescent on his arms into a better position and then they're off, rushing to make a way where there's none. The verdigris-ridden metal gives in easily to his foot and the butt of Lady's gun (too easily? is this a scam?): their steps and strikes make the floor resound nearly as noisily as the obstacle bending and crashing down.

Actually, the pathway turns out to be the shape of a horseshoe, which is so stupid it almost makes him laugh. Dante hasn't apparently shaken all his superstition if he keeps looking out for useless auspices like this.

They walk-run through the tunnel room and it feels like something's supposed to happen. Whatever the trap is, it doesn't spring.

Next door. He's making a mental note about them forging ahead unscathed, which, of course, is a wrong move.

At which point did Vergil lose his other ear?

The door is swung open to reveal their newest playground. He tries to care. Okay: there's a big metal die decorated with wreaths of thorns rolling around the floor, which is covered in colorfully lit platforms like a giant snakes and ladders gameboard. Vergil always hated the game − _he disliked anything in which success was not dependable on the player's skill and got even more annoyed by Dante's shameless cheating attempts. His life after Vergil has been more like a game of chess against him: big brother absolutely decimated him in a couple of moves, or on some occasions after an exasperating war of attrition if he felt like toying with his prey, but somehow Dante got pestered into playing time after time, always setting himself up for failure. _

From the other side of the arena, Lady is saying something to him.

“ −− the spaces, so I guess we proceed by rolling the dice and −−"

He doesn't really hear it. Vergil is also missing a chunk of his chin, he notes while he thumbs the line of his jaw, he's been careful about not to damage him further and all his efforts are useless just as Lady said and when does he _ever notice anything_ −

Dante has no time for games and smoke and mirrors, so he raises Rebellion above his head without thinking too much and cleaves the thing in two. The Sparda family way of solving problems: hit it. If it doesn't die, it'll work, probably.

The lights sputter and die apart from one, blinking to life above an exit. He's given up on counting them now.

“Shall we?” he gestures to Lady, who has a particular look on her face that has lost the ruddiness of frost. Dante knows the expression well − it's her wanting to point something out but realizing it wouldn't go down well with him, and while she's been donning it the entire time, it's getting more severe as her skin thaws. Great, he's sure he doesn't want to hear it. She shakes her head and sprints to the door, her flashy shoes once again ticking intimidatingly against stone.

“I think this is it,” Dante whispers to the lump while catching up. Nothing, no replies, just like he expected. His head swims, a sea breezes between his temples. Somehow, he knows they're close now. He knows he's going to regret not speaking up. Somehow, although it makes zero sense, he'd feel better for having talked with him − even if the chatting was just him talking at Vergil, deaf and mute. If he can't tell which final adieu he'd prefer Vergil to give him, what does he want to let him know above all? “I'm sorry?” “I love you?” “I'm sorry I love you?” “I love you, I'm sorry?” “You still look pretty hot for a comatose torso?” (The problem is: they're all true but only together.)

He's kidding himself, though. He's not going to say a thing.

The sigh rattles in his ribs.

This is it.

The three of them enter another vaguely circular room covered in copper with a loud bang of the door. Stealth is optional on this mission.

Dante makes quick work on cataloguing the space out of reflex. A science-y apparatus on the floor, maybe a tesla coil; a collection of crude metal swords propped on the walls; a large window at the back. Like one of those one-way mirrors they use in interrogation scenes in movies, except it's fully see-through. In the middle of it stands a man. The main cause for him spotting the dude is simply his width, which covers a third of the glass, and he's being only a little hyperbolic here. Dante's not short or scrawny by most standards, but this guy is huge. If he stood up straight, he'd probably be taller than Dante. As it is, his hunch over his notepad rivals the one Vergil has been rocking lately.

The monocle alone tells him this is a baddie; the scowl and the lab coat merely underline the obvious. A villain who can read is nonetheless a step up from his recent opponents, so he won't be complaining about how cliched it is.

He seems surprised to observe the sight in front of him. If the purpose was to keep any intruders from disturbing his peace, maybe he shouldn't have done such a shoddy job of boobytrapping his digs, just saying. Likely he was alerted by the racket Dante made with the dice, since the castle seems to have decent soundproofing and he doubts the sounds would've carried otherwise.

“You -- you're a demon,” he utters and points a thick finger at him.

“Guilty as charged,” Dante replies jovially. The corner of his eye spots Lady investigating the weapons on display on the sly. 

“_Sparda_,” the man half hisses and half marvels. Ah yes, another fanboy. He's forgetting where he is.

“Not really, that's our old man and he's dead, although you guys may have missed that memo. Sorry, but I don't think he's coming back no matter how hard you beg,” Dante says while looking around. Plenty of swords, zero katanas. Should sense her anyway: is she not here? He cranes his neck to see what's on the other side of the glass window. If the man could move a bit −

He does: the scientist begins some animated rant enhanced by melodramatic pacing. Behind him

Blue light.

“**_Dante_**.”

It's -- He hears and feels it boom inside his head. Presence, almost; twisted and reflected from one shattered mirror to another until the echo of an echo of an echo remains. Weaker than weak, but it's the most exposed part of Vergil, it has burrowed under his skin and created a lasting imprint, a replica of a voice that now responds.

It's her.

There's a container of sorts. In the middle of two metal plates streams down a ray of blue light. It's a single continuous current, but at the same time he thinks there's one fall running down from the upper plate and one doing the opposite, meeting seamlessly in the middle where shattered Yamato twirls around lazily. Her remains are in two pieces, the blade severed approximately in two equal halves. If the breaking point is neatly almost in the middle − some fragile part of him dies a little bit further when he's forced to acknowledge she can be broken −, the same cannot be said about the cut itself. It's uneven, sawed. Looks like a bad death.

The flatness to her is similar to Vergil's hair. He won't name it being deceased.

“Listen, the sword is ours − well, my brother's − and we're here to take it,” he interrupts the raving. The mad scientist prototype turns on his heels and looks bristled. “We don't really have the time to waste, so step side and I'll let you live.”

“Ohh, there is another one of you. How very exciting! Why didn't I sense the vicinity of the second descendant?” The guy tilts his monocle. Dante grits his teeth. You too, Brutus?

“No, the first −− No, − _You_. _Listen_.”

The man doesn't.

“I could only detect one curiously, immeasurably powerful demon and a human.” He lets his distaste for his own species be broadcasted in his tone. A self-hating human. That's so fresh.

“I'm coming through this fucking wall to take the sword and your pathetic life too if you as much as breathe in my direction. I'm not kidding and I won't warn you again, don't give a fuck _you're _just a human. You're in my way.”

”Disappointing. Well, rest assured I shall find use for your bodies, d-d-d-dead or alive,” the douche retorts and pushes some kind of emergency button because suddenly there's a horn blaring. Some of the vents dotting the walls and the ceiling of the room fly open and reveal even more of the short gladiuses (gladii?). The blades got the same sort of vibes Lucia emitted once he actually paid any real attention to her − they're artificial. The drive is there, but it feels mechanical and pre-programmed, like watching images that a spinning film reel flashes upon a blank canvas. At least his former employer had been capable of developing a mind of her own and painting her tabula rasa over with some colors. These things don't think, but again, there's a lot of them and the burden he's carrying is fragile.

So − the only thing separating them from the prize is the barrier of glass, if the meat shield can be talked or gunned down. He ignores the demons and his urge to fight them off while rushing forward, only knocking down the projectiles that reach Rebellion's radius. One of the suckers nicks his side open; he barely feels it. Somewhere in the distance, Lady is batting the things with her gun acting as a bayonet − smart move probably, he'd imagine the bullets would ricochet like crazy in these circumstances.

and all of a sudden, there's some life to Vergil and the way he cranes his neck and unseeing eyes towards the lights. As glad as Dante is to see it and as much as he'd like to drink it in, it makes something cold gush into his stomach.

This is it.

He's close to slipping on his own blood when he reaches the window. Trigger or no trigger? Is the glass bullet-proof? What is he talking, of course it is and it doesn't make a difference to him and Rebellion.

He jumps and lets all his frustration and fear pour into the one-handed blow. The man yells; Dante's hair is full of glass and his face is scraped and scratched; Vergil has a large shard sticking out of his left cheek, the most of which crumbles into ash when it's yanked free. Dante sets Vergil down on the floor none too gently immediately when he gets to the upper level of the lab − he needs her now, now when he still has a hand to hold her with, quicker this way, he'll get her, now now now.

They guy, lacking any sense of self-preservation too, tries to grab his arm while saying something Dante doesn't hear or, more accurately, doesn't take any notice of. The arm, though. It's through his chest before Dante even realizes he's lifted it; it's lodged deep inside, so very human-like, and when he jolts in surprise, he feels his hand squeeze into a fist behind the man's back, on the other side of the entrance wound. His hand jerks and he pulls it back and the pierced stomach sort of explodes, there's no better word for it, all over him, somehow. Red, red, red, smells rotten and stings like sacred water. Ahh, the claws came out now, he reckons − only they didn't, his skin is deep crimson but not scaly and demon-y at all. The man gurgles. A scarlet bubble rises to his lips. It never gets to pop; a feeble intake sucks it back inside his mouth. Waste of a last breath. As big as he is (was, he considers, now that his intestines are on his stomach and the floor and lab equipment and Dante's chest), he flops like a ragdoll soon after the hand is removed from his body, as of recent a corpse. He thinks he knows that surgeons wear green scrubs to see the blood better − is it just his unnatural sight or is it highly visible on the white of the guys johnny gown or whatever as well? He did warn him −−

and he has no time to marvel at the cold-blooded murder he committed, because Vergil, who has evidently been crawling towards the container in the meanwhile, carelessly using his last sort of intact limb as a leverage, has stopped moving. He lies on the floor on his stomach and face with his arm stretched in Yamato's direction. If the line of sand behind them earlier could be called a trail of breadcrumbs, now there's a broad white runway spreading out under him. The parts of his clothing that are supposed to hold his lower body are looking disturbingly flat and empty. Here's his waist and then…

(The thought about him being a torso was just a _joke_ −−)

He couldn't wait for the couple of seconds or a minute or whatever it would have taken Dante to fetch the sword.

Dante has to move **now**. In essence, it's good. He's afraid of change, even positive. Such a self-destructive mindset, absolutely, he knows it better than anyone and it still refuses to go away. If he gets around to thinking about it, he might never decide how to proceed and, as a result, the decision could be taken away from his quivering hands. If he puts Yamato back together (if he can, if he figures out how, if Vergil's able to use her) − Vergil will walk away from him. If he refuses to hand her over to him − Vergil dies. There are no universes where he stays.

What _does _Dante want?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bible translations are from Wikipedia this time, since I couldn't be bothered to get my Vulgata out for something that's so well established anyway.
> 
> For more of Dante's thoughts about the Gloria dress and wearing it, there's the fluffy/porny piece I wrote a while ago. I blame having to replay DMC 4 to write this chapter for that.
> 
> Next: chapter 14, also known as “the plot finally goes somewhere, congrats for making it this far”. Still haven't decided if it'll be a giant chapter or several shorter ones, probably the latter. Going to be fun anyway.


	14. xiv. Life not Whole

Yamato whirrs curiously. Her voice is a small but constant electric shock ricocheting between bone and fingertips pressed against her, like hair crackles when temperature sways under zero. Familiar but more cautious than he had the privilege to get used to, back when Vergil's smile wasn't colder and more impersonal than his scowl. She tells him what she wants to know, but the answers aren't necessarily those he's able to provide her.

It's been − how long has it been, eleven years already? She's forgotten his touch or has grown wary of it since. He doesn't blame her: she was there, a year ago, and furthermore, the Dante he is today is virtually a stranger to them both, little more than an impostor of the brother Vergil once had. Some days he wakes a little bit more himself or rather his former self and doesn't know whose skin he's wearing, doesn't like it. (Sometimes, often, he thinks the exact same things through over and over without being aware of it since he needs to keep his mind constantly filled up, even with repeatedly looped notions running in endless circles.) Now, he finds it impossible to explain to her. She was never his, she made that perfectly clear, but when his past self held his hand out to her, she'd allow him to pet her and might even hum. When she clashed with Rebellion, on the other hand, even he could feel the thrilled laughter of someone who is dancing on the edge of falling and feeling all the more alive for it emanating from her; and since Rebellion wasn't and isn't a part of him like she's a part of Vergil, he's occasionally hard-pressed to know which sword he's envied more in the end.

(He never paid much thought to wondering where she disappeared after the murder of their family, wanting to believe she took her place as the one soul to die by his side, with him. Being jealous was better than acknowledging how utterly abandoned his twin had been in the moment. Learning that he must have taken her with him when abandoning him has been… a bittersweet lesson.)

He senses the teeth, the death and cultivated brutality simmering at her core; it'd be hard to ignore how ready she's to turn on him if he as much as thinks of using her against her rightful owner. But − the fire that flickers in his blood tells him she recognizes the same all-consuming protectiveness in Dante and doesn't disapprove. Instead of taking him for a second woman after her man and lashing out in anger at him and his unwarranted possessiveness, she knows her place and his at least as well as he does. The questioning remains, but when he raises her and strikes, she rewards him with a clean cruel cut.

Together, they pierce the pulsing, twitching mass that is Vergil's occult suitor pumped up with Sparda's leftover juices. On the other side of the foul-smelling glob of flesh, which is corrupted by demon blood just like them but is apparently having none of the benefits like the good looks and humanity going for it, his brother is doing the same thing with Rebellion. Dante hears him grunt when the weight of the broadsword comes as a surprise. He's forgetting things too, then. (Again, please. He wants to preserve it in a tin and take it out when his imagination is stale and his lust high.)

No feedback from Rebellion; there never is. It's not that he doesn't trust it, he'd merely like to consult someone or something that could interpret his twin better than he can by himself. Lifting Yamato to a new attack, he wonders if she's a gossip: does Vergil know how hot his skin burns on her body, how much his hands sweat. A pearl of it runs down his stomach − how agitated he is under his leathers.

The next vocalization makes his spasmodic toes curl.

Dante's feet are giving out under him. Just hearing him, thinking of him, is exquisite torture. Vergil's wielding Rebellion. Vergil's putting his weight into the strikes, pummeling savagely, making the weapon waltz its joyful dance macabre. Dante's brain is reduced to pinging this info around. Vergil's hands. Vergil's gasping. Vergil's sweat light and salty in the air. Fuck. Glad the katana is professional enough for the two of them on this side.

She isn't even sticky with the fluid the blob keeps gushing out when punctured. Everything falls off her like water off coated feathers. Immovable, untouchable; in the heat of this battle and their heated synergy, he finds the rhythm, the baseline of his twin he's been looking for the whole day. The unsettling skittishness to his soul is finally gone, giving way to something intense, pure and serene. His pulse is wild, Dante senses it under his own breastplate while mirroring his labored breathing, but this animation he understands. This they share, two predators circling around prey, lame as it is. Dante, a goddamn mess, does his best to keep up.

The way he moves with Yamato is nothing like her fluid valses with her only true partner; instead of long, steady, thought-out lacerations he draws out short, jerky notes that would suit Rebellion but are too hasty for her restraint. Figures she'd be the one weapon he has never quite managed to wield right. In spite of the discord, she gets the job done − she is as sharp, vicious and beautiful as Vergil − _is_ him, and he's grateful and choking.

Somehow, it feels like an acceptance of some part of Dante as well.

_What is he to Vergil?_

_When Vergil eventually says jump (if he will; if he'll let Dante in), how far will he go for him?_

She questions, and he doesn't answer in words.

But.

That was the last time he held Yamato (by the handle and not by gripping the blade; _Vergil has to understand_ no matter how hard you try you're never gonna be like Father −).

But.

But that was a lifetime ago.

Today, Yamato does not sing when Dante touches her.

She screams.

He reaches out towards her through the blue flame that feels like nothing when it permeates his skin, the tip of his index finger pressing flat against the blade that has struck him down so many times, vibrant with his brother's life, now flatlined. Nothing, nothing happens. She's cold, the steel siphons a fraction of his body warmth and stores it under his fingerprint. Nothing happens − so he opens up, opens his palm and curls it around her piercing, broken neck. Presses his fist closed gently. He is all he has to offer and his blood is all Vergil's ever accepted from him. She's hurt and stunned, but like a big cat under narcosis, she lifts her heavy head to bite into him. Dante's blood runs through the groove and for a moment he feels a distant relief in the pain, echo of a home lost.

Dante bleeds on her. The lull of it is familiar and pure from corruption. There are no alternatives to welcoming it with candid, sanguine honesty.

“_Must more blood be shed_?” Oh, brother. It's his key for everything. (Let it be enough this time.)

Dante bleeds on her − she starts screaming.

The sound is so shrill it cannot be heard. Once again − it's getting tiring to perceive audio by senses other than hearing. He's had a lot of static swishing and rolling in his head lately, but the other recent assaults have done it horizontally like dams breaking down and hitting him in broad walls of waves. Yamato's wail is tight and pointed, she's an edge all around, even her handle is sharpened with the pattern of crisp lines cutting into each other and her wooden scabbard kindled with metal. No soft speckles to be found.

And Dante − he must be howling too, from the anguish firing off from her physically, from the mental strain, for doing this despite being sure of how he'll only prolong his own heartache (see − he's selfish enough to risk it all for a fickle promise of one more minute, of course, of course). He doesn't − he wants − he doesn't know, the katana in his hand is a live wire and his own mind, could be his, swarms him into the storm.

He's − beaten, struck down − underwater, film of the surface fluttering over his face − he's betrayed him.

Hurts.

Useless.

− you cannot protect anything.

Immersed in rain.

Is the pain his or hers: a reflection from the past or his synapses crossing and frying? The agony is shapeless but not aimless. Their common reason and sorrow. Vergil. Vergil.

Vergil.

Vergil in red water, on his knees, seeping saltwater into the sea. Dante lies on the ground partly submerged, impotent and useless and out of his reach; the surface ripples with a deep rhythm, rises above his eyes and falls back again. Slow, imminent footfall. He sees him − a bright flame in unnatural dusk and dawn. Vergil in red water. Vergil is shaking. Vergil is crying − long fingers cover his mouth but only frame his scarlet eyes. Long lashes laden with tears and blood surging from beneath his palms and ruined sockets. He cries inconsolably − a trinity of electric red lights illuminates his face − he cries and cries out something but he, she cannot hear him, the waves hit him, her, they flood over them and drown them in the color. Red; and then, only the pain.

The pieces of Yamato connect with a silent click. Dante's body jerks violently when it all disappears in an instant and he's back to the laboratory − just a clear metallic sound reverberating through her body and his. A blue glow grows from the fracture and consumes the sword. It flares up and burns sharper and sharper until it turns his sight completely, achingly white − and then, another metallic noise, a sigh.

He blinks. Yamato trills at him, whole and spirited. The split is gone without leaving a trace. (When has the sheath materialized in his other hand? His fingers tighten around lacquered black wood that doesn't answer, merely breathes with him.) It's just her now, although strangely communicative. Restless. Dante swears − she's the second proudest entity he's ever met, but − he swears she's saying please.

Well, who is he to deny a lady in need. He launches himself into action because of being ordered to, not because of the protectiveness blistering his innards again: makes a weighed, calculated decision and doesn't just bolt out of instinct, haunted by the vision he had to live through a moment ago.

Yeah, right. (It's easier to forget it if he busies himself with not killing his brother again, though.)

Vergil is unmoving when Dante scoops him up from the ivory shore and props his shoulder against some boxy measuring device. Somehow, he manages to balance him so that his right side leans against the instrument and he stays upright when there's nothing to support the most of his back and even that takes too much effort − he's so light now that he's lost both his legs completely, maybe that helps −− His hand is rigid-limp when Dante grabs it with his trembling grip. He shoves the katana against his palms, tries to squeeze his three remaining fingers to hold her. A lump in his throat. Throwing away the scabbard hurts when he's always been so hyperaware of how careful Vergil has been with it, how much the simple motions of sheathing and unsheathing her seemed to have comforted and grounded him, but he doesn't really feel it, not under the looming mass of failure, throwing away a portion of him, abandoning a piece, shreds of memories, barely even registers. Worthless. Too late, it doesn't work, it's too late −

Beneath the hysterics, he hears himself begging, no meddlesome dignity to keep him from it “-- for this one last time, Vergil, at least you could try, please, can't give up like this now −“, _you can't do this to me_, but he's slipping, his hand is slipping on the diamonds of the handle wrapping, stiff and too lax at the same time, and Dante's nervous shaking almost peels off the grip he manages to construct finger by finger. One. Two. Three. Three; three is a Biblical number, a number of completeness, three is the number of resurrection − When he withdraws his hands, the sword, miraculously, stays in his.

Some faint gleam of vitality kicks Vergil in the stomach. He makes a coarse noise: again, nothing like the racket a human body should be capable of making. His wrist slackens and tenses, turns the blade minutely. Another sound − like a small-scale explosion inside him. Dante hears mortar crumbling deep within.

Vergil's lower lip moves a tick to the side, which causes another broad rift to open on his right cheekbone; the left is mostly gone at this point like his ears, like a large portion of his chin. If he notices he's missing more than a fraction of his face, he isn't letting it show. There is all of a sudden a whisper of his resoluteness in the way his head is set. It should be a good sign, he still knows what to do with it, right?, and yet Dante's alarmed, his skin jumping and dread puncturing holes in his airways.

He has a feeling he doesn't like.

Vergil raises his hand shakily, scattering fine white sand all over the floor like a broken hourglass. There is nothing red on him, not even a smear of Dante's blood: the splatter apparently missed Vergil and he seems to have healed from the wounds caused by the pointy little demons and shards of the window at some point before manhandling him, doesn't matter. Nevertheless, the brief image of him stripped from all of his pride and alone in the lake sears panic to the back of his skull. Suffocation in red.

It's a bad feeling.

What if −

But − He wouldn't −

“Dante, don't!” Lady shouts somewhere in another dimension. Too late: Dante doesn't control his body, the foreboding sense of sheer terror is holding the reins and keeps him rooted on the spot, witnessing Yamato's climb towards the ceiling. At the apex of the arch, the motion stills.

“Stand back,” Vergil gravels.

Dante has never heard him sound like that. His voice is so quiet that he only hears it because of being a demon, it's stifled under a collapsing body, but the weight it carries is unlike anything he's ever come across. It's not a plead, not a command; a compelling spell but without any magic involved.

_Leave me and go_.

_I__'m staying_.

Dante does stumble to the side in unthinking action, a bit to the back, just in time to witness from an unobstructed angle how Vergil drives Yamato through his chest and how the tip gets dragged down, down to his stomach, his name twisting Vergil's lips into a painfully familiar dying grimace, amalgamated into a laugh that is bitter enough to contaminate an entire ocean. “Dante.”

He hears himself scream the “no” that slams itself against his sore eardrums and knows he's making an attempt to barge forward, but it's all very distant. Vergil's body consumes energy he doesn't have any more too quickly to be able to handle being knifed by a devil arm and now there's a brand new hole in him for it to run out ever more quickly and Yamato's meaner than any other blade so the damage's that much worse and nothing is born out of nothing so when he does run out, god, this is another chance to witness him passing away without shedding a drop of blood,

There's a bolt of blue violet. The color blinds him momentarily and makes him halt in his race towards him. It glimmers; he feels like someone's pressing the middle of his eyeballs in and the tissue remains concave and blurry

for

some

time.

This is where Dante's already tortured attention splits into two.

Glints of the color still clinging to the edges of his vision and tainting his field of view, he sees a scene playing out in front of him. In medias res. Life rams into him at maximum velocity and he isn't given enough time to even spit out his teeth. None of it seems to add up, but when has that been a concern, ever? On the floor, a sickly young man that's only marginally less of a skeleton than Vergil but still very much a lich candidate with his protruding ribs and elbows rakes his bony fingers on the floor to purchase enough leverage to crank himself up. Since he is naked, Dante could count the knobs of his spine, which is almost as pale as his brother's fissured skin as it twitches and slithers its way up from the ground.

Speaking of that. The stranger turns and turns out to be crumbling as well, he somehow notices it only at this point even when he's been on display the whole time after --, and when Dante stares at his wide, pronounced mouth, he thinks he recognizes the majority of the crevices, that they're similar, no, identical, to the ones he's been forced to get acquainted with during this Purgatory of his. It takes a couple of blinks to make note of the fact, since at first blush the guy appears to be even more worn down on the surface than Vergil. From the neck down, his complexion is riddled with curious lines, too deliberate to be mere cracks. The swirls resemble a pretentious tribal tattoo, but they're too deep to be just ink and all color is missing. He's reminded of dried-out riverbeds or the grooves on the floor of Temen-ni-gru, the ones over which Vergil might have sacrificed him and he might have let him, had they not been interrupted.

The guy is pouring out on the floor too. All his limbs are intact − as in “in one piece, mostly”, which is more than can be said of some people − and his cheeks are there, but in the time it takes for him to get up and test his legs with a couple of fumbling steps to Dante's direction, his jaw has begun to melt into sand.

For someone so frail, the vibrant green blink he flashes at Dante is remarkably impassioned. The involuntary shivers it awakens underscore how dead in the water he is.

Without the blemishes and the haunted intensity of his eyes, the stranger would probably be quite the beauty; he has thin, cleanly cut features that are framed by dark lashes and a mop of longish black hair, and all this striking harshness is contrasted by the softness of his white lips. His mouth, _his_ mouth, almost; on his narrow bony face, it's like a caricature of Dante's dearest and oldest obsession. The man even wears it like Vergil − as if he's uncomfortable with its remarkable potential for indicating feelings so he mangles the tender and vulnerable into just another shank. Too washed out, the shade of it, though; does that increase the dreamlike quality of the moment or dispel it? Impossible to say, his focus is shot.

See, that's only the first character in the room.

On the other side of the lab, Vergil's on the floor. Only Dante is even less sure if it's him; the way he's bowed, he can't see his head. A familiar motif, that. The thick blue mist seeping out of him obscures most details anyway. From what is visible under it, his shape is mutated, mutating, he's shaking like he's barely keeping something inside his frame, and he's − growing, his back ballooning up under his clothes. There's the sound of fabric ripping at the seams; a series of sick little snaps Dante feels on his palms as he were the one to cause them, to break bones.

Yamato is still lodged inside the figure, her presence throbbing on Dante's temples. She's still plucking some sore string inside his body; he thinks they're sharing the same pulse, him and her, the same pain, hot and wet and strumming through his core, acute and weirdly distant at the same time. The cloying blue gets stuck on the roof of his mouth: perhaps that's why everything's so cloggy and bundled in steel wool. Maybe it's also why he isn't rushing to him in spite of his obvious − distress. Some neural connection is broken. (Useless, worthless, guilty.)

The stranger drags himself to Dante painstakingly, every pace looking like a full-blown war between minute progress and tipping over. When he's crossed the distance and halts just inside the ring of his personal space, his nonexistent posture sways from the strain.

“No matter what happens, do not come closer,” he rasps, his voice deep and foreign but the cadence and the precise way he articulates the sentence eerily intimate. Dante finds his tongue and is surprised it's functional.

“What the fuck is this? I don't know who or what you are to think you can boss me around, but I've got to do something,” he snarls. He's got to do something, once he figures out what to do. How to do it.

The man sighs. “Dante,” he says, and when he opens his maw to demand answers to questions he can't fully outline yet, he feels a rough finger pull it closed. It doesn't withdraw instantly; the guy rests it on the spot, just in the middle of it, and presses down, as if he could leave a lasting imprint of his fingerprint on Dante's lips. The gesture quietens him but wakes up the ghost of his older brother using the trick to surprise him into silence and attention. Only back then, he read it as fraternal affection; whatever this is gets lost into how strictly speaking erotic the sensualism of the touch is to him. The guy keeps applying the pressure and slides his touch to the side, traces the shape while looking him in the eye; willing to commit this to his own memory or trying to mess up Dante's? He cracks his mouth open to say something, maybe to voice whatever it is that's clearly burning behind his eyes, and Dante watches in hypnosis, sees him close it, swallow the thought. The way his lips settle into a stark line is so familiar that it's a blow to his solar plexus; so forceful that he doesn't even feel Rebellion being pulled from the hand that has apparently been holding it all this time, not until it has been snatched and the culprit is already halfway there to the third humanoid in the lab.

It all either happens more quickly than the man should be capable of in his decrepit state or then Dante is slowed down by the sheer mindfuck of it. A little column A, a little column B; whatever the truth is, the skeleton has dragged his arm to the figure on the other side before Dante has managed to recover. Diversion, it was a diversion, shit: _focus_.

While the fog has only had a hint of purple this far, now the shape is flushed with red; vivid violet takes over the hunched back and immolates it into a violent bonfire. Yamato shines glowing white and the pressure inside Dante's head tightens into a white-hot rope.

“_No_!” the disintegrating man shouts in a terrible voice. The pure emotion packed into it curdles blood. His lungs seem to be drained from the exertion; he leans over the weapon he's lugged to the corner of the room and pants and gasps, clearly hurting. That doesn't erase the victorious and simultaneously disbelieving poison rolling on his tongue when he speaks out as softly as plush satin: “Not this time. Today, I am stronger than you.”

His voice seems to pick up in strength and savagery towards the end even though his skin is also coming off more rapidly, washing away his visage and making it resemble a skull. This only makes his eyes stand out more − if they really were more exposed and gentler when touching Dante, that's one thing. When he addresses the twitching shape on the floor, they are filled with a fervor that is frankly horrifying, even coming from something so obviously moribund.

“non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum; you remember, even if you would rather not to.” Having said this, his form that has been standing tall over Vergil (?) collapses into a powerless slouch again. Now it stoops even lower, delivering the line has apparently wiped him out to the degree that standing has become excruciatingly toiling.

“Just... a little longer,” he drawls out breathlessly. He is barely able to lift his head enough to fly his gaze around the room. It lingers on Dante a second too long before it's ripped away and concealed under the hair the outlander tosses over it.

“Wait!“ Dante yells, trying to find his feet. Must still have them, otherwise he'd feel something, probably. He doesn't have to understand what's going on in order to see things have taken a turn for the worse and will continue to do so until, until, he doesn't know but something's got to happen.

“Dante,” the skinny man shouts back, grunting and lifting Rebellion up with strained arms and a cloak of sand growing wider and longer on his shoulders. “Stand back or Vergil will be gone for good!” It costs him − the remains of his nose fall off and take a chunk of a shoulder with them. Losing the humanness bit by bit highlights his groaning mouth, which is why it takes so long for Dante to act. That, and −−

He can't _not_ scramble forward despite the warning given loud and clear. Whatever it is that's happening, it's looking bad and he has to stop it, the thing on fire could have been Vergil, could still be, and he has to do something, anything. (Make this stranger stop saying his name; he has spent ages forcing himself to forget it, anchor it somewhere inside him so that it will no longer rise to his lips when he wakes up from a dream, wet with the sweat of a nightmare or a scarier fantasy; make him take it back so that it won't come back to haunt him again when this is all said and done; make the guy pay for using it so carelessly, − he has _no idea_ − without permission, as if he's merely expendable syllables --).

Before he can really get closer, though, he's knocked down to the floor by the force of something hard crashing into him. The one thing he manages to carry out on his way down is yelping a mental “of course”. It, too, gets lost in the agony that follows: fuck, all of a sudden he is aware of his legs, how they shriek in an unnatural position under the bulk of his body. _Can__'t pass out, don't pass out, where the fuck is your left hand, got to get up_. He's too busy with now literally spitting out his teeth to avoid being suffocated to death, and so he gurgles and inhales iron and loose pieces of bone. When he does lift his head, mouth stained with blood and the ends of his ribs poking into his lungs under all the bruises that must have engulfed him, he supposes he should've seen this coming.

Near the two figures on the other side of the laboratory, the bike from Hell screeches to a halt by making a steep turn a second before it would collide with the wall. The man standing next to it sighs in relief.

Dante is only getting back on his feet, which most likely look in different directions and might pulverize under him, when the marginally more vivacious part of the duo flops against the maybe-Vergil, back against back. It's like his walking cadaver is losing all tension; the body slackens, the necromancy sputters on its death throes and tosses a wilting black tulip on the pyre. Jaw hanging open, his head lolls backwards; the green of his irises disappears from the headlights. With strength that seems to come from nowhere, he drives Rebellion through the two of them, eliciting a roar that vibrates under Dante's sternum so intensively that he is unsure if he lets it out himself or if comes from the depths of Vergil's clothes.

“And now his eternal life  
Like a dream was obliterated,” the guy gasps. Slumped against the back of the other character, he begins to slip down around the sword like slow tar. The air glimmers with the white dust, now pouring out in an unending stream from the entrance wound Rebellion has carved.

He turns his head at Dante. He smiles.

The flames cover them in blood-red light. Dante's shout is breathless from the floor stifling his breath when he does keel over and hits it hard.

The motorcycle erupts in glowing purple as well. Instead of obscuring it, the brilliance condensates into a sphere, about the size of a football or a human head, that leaves the metal carcass and surges towards the spot Dante's boneless form is lying on its stomach. Once there, here, it hovers above his head and dims for a second, as if blinking in acknowledgement.

“Dante,” a voice says.

The tone is familiar like something he heard at least two (three, now?) decades ago, almost fond. He doesn't remember words, just the faintly amused rumble he had mistaken for true affection. Eva laughed, anyway; unknowing she'd never get an explanation. That this would be what'd get her killed.

“_Is that all you have to say to me after all these years_?” he thinks detachedly, rusty hinges clicking something open and closed inside his cranium. The grave doesn't answer; the remains of the soul course past him and disappear into the jumble of the fires and then they're gone.

Another strobe light commences; a physical impact wave trashes his head back to the ground.

A hinge closes. He loses time.

When he hoists it up once again, it feels like reality is cracking around him like glass. He doesn't sense the cuts. No.

What comes first is the beat.

He's suddenly back to the pocket of space between Hell and the real world. The devil sword keeps whispering to him − _how high will you jump? How much more are you willing to pay? _−, but it's an undercurrent. What he really hears is the pulse that both stabilizes him and drives him wild. In his current stage, it rips him in two: there's the throbbing anxious excitement of his own heart struggling to close up the gap between them while the rest of him is so tired, so spent and incapable of dealing with one more feeling and false hope that it's basically dead, holding his used-up body hostage on the floor (it's good, with the organ trying to beat its violent way out of his chest there's no way of him stopping it, especially when he's healing from the earlier collision).

He −

stands tall with a poise he's last seen ten long years ago.

V −

runs his left hand through his hair to push it away from his face with five neat fingers.

his back is still turned towards Dante.

_I used to feel you inside of me_, he thinks. The moment extends over its borders in time that has solidified. If there wasn't an electric charge building up in the space between them, could he stay here, forever frozen on the cusp of an eventuality? The moment extends over its borders in time that has solidified until he produces a quiet glottal noise and then turns on his bare heels.

Reality crashes at Dante at full speed, now. He has never been locked up in one of those sensory deprivation tanks, even the thought sounds revolting because his subconsciousness does not wish him any good, but the sensation of crawling out of them must feel similar to this, provided that one has spent a decade (two?) floating in tepid salt-saturated water and being strangled by all the accumulated baggage, unrestrained and held down by nothing, zero distractions. It's terrible, it's overwhelming and his mind, for once in its miserable existence, seems to realize Dante can't handle it because it just _shuts down_. He has been running on fumes since leaving Dumary Island, gone without eating and sleeping for ten years straight and had his chest torn open, his torso cut up in two almost like Yamato (is this why she is among the wave of voices still --). It's too much too quickly he can't process it and then he doesn't he doesn't process it anything he goes off and since he doesn't feel it it is the best feeling he has never had.

− one moment he is crushed under too much and the next he is crushing the body of his brother, unsure if any blood can flow in his veins. His, not Vergil's, except he smells it, and after aeons of missing it and hallucinating it and despising its effect on him, the scent reaches him as overbearingly as it would if he'd be cut open, just for him. Dante doesn't think he is: the glimpse of him that he caught earlier and that his brain is only now piecing together had been flawless like that, pristine, a newly pressed coin. His face, no longer partly hidden behind his overgrown hair, is not Dante's anymore, it's the same one he's been carrying under the decay but now clear and so, so − alive. Still about twenty in age if he had the wherewithal to guess; jawline still narrower than Dante's with more pronounced cheekbones and gaunter cheeks to underline the difference; his mouth still ridiculous. He's beautiful. He's different. It hurts.

He's tall. Even without shoes, his head is higher than Dante's by a couple of inches. Hard to estimate when Dante's skull is trying to burrow itself into his shoulder, but it's there. It, the shoulder, and the back under his death grip and simple, somewhat torn attire Dante stole for him are definitely leaner than someone blessed and cursed with Vergil's power should have, but they're firm, impossible and impossible to doubt. But, he doesn't have it in himself to believe.

He is not crying. He is not breathing − when he tries to, his throat lets out a rattle. He's stuck, cornered, needs to have the other shoe to drop because it is impossible for him do anything. Everything is a dead end.

“Dante,” his voice is stretched thin when it travels through Dante's body. Under the once familiar nasal lilt it's perfectly polished; when Dante tries to grasp it, his fingers leave behind no smudges, the steel is stainless and reflects back nothing more than his own deformed uncertainty.

He says nothing because he can't, doesn't dare. Vergil, given time, will speak on his own accord if it's worth being spoken, so he has learned. So he waits.

He feels real.

“Get off my back.”

“I will not tell you a second time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, a short(ish) chapter. I don't think I'll be doing one of those for a while with this story.  
V's quote is, of course, by William Blake (Book of Urizen because what else). The Latin is from Horace 2,17 this time. It's a poem I have an enormous amount of Vergil thoughts about, so it'll come up again, guaranteed. Translation:
> 
> \-- non ego perfidum  
dixi sacramentum --  
I have not spoken a dishonest oath
> 
> Also, cheers for new kudos, always delighted to get feedback!


	15. xv. Paleness Deep as Violet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wrapped up a big irl writing gig that'll pay my bills and hopefully leave me more time to write as a hobby again.
> 
> Also, I'll take back my words; some time ago, I realized hitting 100 000 words would be something that takes place sooner than initially expected. Since then, I've really wanted some things to happen when the limit is crossed. In other words, got to keep this really short to get to that in chapter 16.

“D' you think he's dead?” he asks.

Vergil halts his movements, his hair beaming in the sun and flopping over his face when the swing he's sitting on loses speed. A silent eye and mouth peek from under it towards his direction. Dante can't resist: he makes his last swing very very high just to show off and enjoys how it feels to nearly touch the sky with the tips of his toes. Dad could fly, Mom and Vergil have told him − maybe one day he'll learn how to do it and gets to fight Vergil up in the air, in their own private world. One day − just a little higher, a little stronger, and they'll make it.

When the wave dies out and he's back to his twin's side, he gets serious too.

“Do you?” he pushes. Vergil's eye is bluer than the sky but the strands covering are almost like a cloud.

“That's what people usually mean when they say someone has left and is unlikely to come back.” His voice is bored when he pushes his hair back, but he keeps looking at him.

“You're not answering,” Dante points out. He'd say it's mean if he didn't know Vergil does it when he's surprised and doesn't want to show it. Well, it's still a bit mean, but that's Vergil for you.

“No,” Vergil agrees. Dante makes a singsong noise and kicks off again.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi. Gonna be raining today with all these clouds gathering above them. His brother swings half-heartedly, more like sways, and drags his feet against the sand, drawing circles that overlap and get muddled into each other. Three Mississippi. It's more fun to flaunt his awesome swinging skills when he's paid the attention he deserves. The sky seems less blue, somehow.

He loses count at some point but isn't worried, not when Vergil's lost in thought. There will be an answer just like there'll be rain. Sometimes he thinks he understands what Vergil means when he reads to him about fate.

“I do not like thinking there is something that could kill him.”

Rain becomes a synonym for vitriol, later.

-

“I will not tell you a second time.”

Ah.

Really must be him.

No one else is cold like this. Dante feels icy water flush away some of the sluggishness clouding his skull.

He doesn't want clarity. He wants − but Vergil was never one to play with his delusions.

He catches up with the body that has flinched backwards on autopilot. Vergil looks like he wants to dust himself off but refrains from doing so to underline how unaffected he is. From the distance sprouted between them, closeable in two strides but in reality insurmountable, Dante still hears him. His lungs, his heart, the single confirmatory tap of his finger against the handle of Yamato. Really must be him.

Not that he's ever heard him quite as callous as now. The words leave behind imprints of his canines all over his body; instead of being arousing, what the impression does is make him uncomfortably sober.

Frustrated, sure. He's heard him reckless, angry, pained (the sound of his screams in the red; a memory? a hallucination? between that and the clink his half of the amulet made when it hit the floor of the castle − which one achieves being the worst thing he's had to hear?). Never openly hostile like this Vergil. This heartless Vergil with a pulse so physical that it seems to erase his own tugs his shirt so that most of the tears get hidden, leaving just a sliver or two of pale but no longer bone-white skin visible. He looks at his own hands while he works, concentrated and quietly efficient and Yamato carefully tucked between an arm and a side. When he seems to deign the clothing acceptable enough and lets his arms relax into a taut fighting stance, his eyes focus on Dante's face again. They're so shuttered that flashes of the Angelo bleed into clear blue of his irises when Dante blinks.

Dante likes the dross inside his head. This wasn't the skeleton key to unlocking his feelings, after all. So tired. His body is alive. Vergil's, theirs. Vergil is observing him with none of the softness he at least imagined seeing in the green. He's glad, he is.

It takes some time to notice that faithful Yamato has become silent to him again. Should not come as a surprise, though, as there is absolutely nothing newsworthy of Vergil keeping parts of himself beyond Dante's reach. He wonders, once again, if he'll feel it when he dies this time.

(_How high?_ But he's never told what's expected of him, how high is high enough, if he's capable in the first place.)

For a moment, he clings to the thought of Vergil not remembering him due to what-the-fuck-ever that little stabbing display was. Should stop trying to lie to himself, really: no way this link of theirs isn't telling him the same truths it's screaming at him. The recognition goes both ways. This is your brother.

He knows. (He just doesn't care.

The opposite of love is indifference, not hate.

Dante wants to fight him, make himself matter to him the only way he can.)

Dante drops his gaze down to pin it on Vergil's fingers, deeming them relatively harmless because otherwise he'd have to look at his face. The differences in their fighting styles have pushed them into different directions early on in this department; Dante's hands have always been blunter, fit for a cudgel like him. Thicker fingers, seemingly permanently hardened skin on places where a person exclusively into swords would never develop calluses, cracked nails, hangnails, peeling cuticles. A scar he sometimes wants to rip open with his teeth so that the flesh would form a different blemish and drown out the old one but never does because it's still a gift, his mark of shame and Cain, a tombstone for a grave that never got dug. It's carried Vergil with him thus far. Although he can heal pretty much anything, there's something about the skin on them that makes them susceptible to being marked when they ought to forget what his mind can't − but here they are, crushed into fists and branded by the two things that have defined him from day one, fighting and losing. Vergil's hands, however, are now spindlier than ever if you ignore the fibers of glass they were recently. His prominent knuckles and joints and veins are wrapped around Yamato with delicateness that smothers Dante's neck as well. Without gloves to cover them up, they feel startlingly naked; equal parts of upset and visceral want course through his system. These hands have done a lot to him. Stolen, lulled him to sleep, carved a name somewhere in his chest cavity. He's let them. Just − what is he signing up for, this time?

His palms must be unmarred.

Vergil's feet are bare when he stands in the remains of his former body, ash-colored sand under his soles expanding into a cemetery. There's a metaphor there, his hands and self-destruction.

Foolish Dante. Can't protect Vergil from himself.

Vergil watches him in silence. He blinks occasionally but nothing in his face moves.

The tension doesn't shatter even when they all of a sudden hear the sound of something being kicked behind Dante's back. It merely quivers and tightens again.

“_This _was their head scientist, Agnus. That and losing the Yamato should set them back some, but − they've got the sword, the Sparda,” Lady pipes up while climbing over the oversized corpse she's booting a second time for kicks. Right, she… saw all that. How embarrassing. Though she's been there to witness him crying as an adult more often than anyone else − not a very high bar, thankfully −, he's now supposed to feel at least marginally better for not getting caught outright weeping against his unwilling brother. Nah, doesn't; the whole display was the definition of undignified and Vergil turned him down so brusquely anyone could've recognized it for the slap in the face it was. Where is the masochistic part of him when he needs it, the one that always makes him do this shit only to disappear when he could use the ability to live with the fallout?

Vergil's attention snaps to her but drifts quickly back to Dante. Raising his eyebrow, he waits for Dante to provide him with an explanation. Doesn't seem like he remembers her from the tower episode. Can't really blame him, it was a top-notch shitshow and he himself was blinded by Vergil as usual. Glass houses and stones and so forth.

“They?” Dante says, at least making a token effort to pretend any of this matters.

“The Order of the Sword. Fanatic Sparda worshippers. Raving lunatics with toys they can't handle, you name it.”

“Care to elaborate a bit further, Lady?” he asks. Hard to believe some plain mortals could have taken it from the women, so either they lost it or sold it and caught a severe case of seller's regret afterwards. Presumably, he should be concerned.

“Soon after you − vanished, rumors about zealots hoarding devil arms began to surface. It eventually got bad enough that we decided to look into it.” Dante reads the “also, Morrison said he'd pay a pretty penny for it, so someone must've given a damn” into her tale automatically. ”I infiltrated the cult by letting them have the Sparda, but something went wrong or something, because I was never let in on the details. Anyway, the big plan is to use some smaller Hell gates to open a real portal to the netherworld to, dunno, rule this one somehow and that's what I'm trying to prevent here.”

Fair enough, Dante concludes. Loons du jour, delusions of grandeur, got it. Why does everyone have a hobby of taking over this realm these days? He needs a drink.

“That's what I need the Yamato for,” Lady says slowly, eyeing the katana resting in Vergil's hand all royal and deadly. The connection Dante had to her has fizzled out; not even statistic answers when he tries to re-establish it to gauge Vergil's mood.

Vergil's grip on her tightens visibly. He must be projecting his movements on purpose; it's easier than saying “no, you can't have this” and “Christ, woman, she's __Yamato_” or whatever he might be yelling in that pretty head of his. Just as effective, too. Lady's face falls.

“But I don't have to have it with me; I'm happy as long as they can't get it, although it's a bit iffy if they can use the Sparda instead. We'll find out soon. They're meeting up to start some kind of demon ritual today.“ Dante's not surprised she's backpedaling. The murderous intent makes his hair stand on end as well. In trepidation, not… jealousy.

“Dante,” Vergil exclaims, quietly enough that he's simultaneously able to communicate with him and brush her presence - existence - off like she was never in the same room. He continues while Lady gets closer to where Dante's, miraculously enough, standing:

“I must get back to Hell immediately.”

“Fuc − why?”

The answer doesn't come instantly. Vergil could be trying to summon a dramatic silence with the pause, but Dante sees him flick the blade inconspicuously, once, twice, thrice. There's no point to it, no function. Vergil doesn't fidget, hasn't in years.

This is not good.

This is, in fact, very bad.

“To kill him.”

Wh−

Mu−

“I − _now_?”

“While I am no longer acutely dying, this” a vague gesture of tilting the tip of Yamato from left to right “has solved none of the problems related to the failsafe or my recollections thereof.”

Oh yeah, the memory loss and his ties to Mundus. The first word his brain comes up with is not “ties” or "shackles", though, it's “bond”. He hates himself.

When Vergil closes his mouth, speech stops coming out. Should stop staring, then. Looking at it fucks him up. Deceptive softness, still. What wouldn't he give to run his thumb on the lower lip, watch him open to his touch, a hint of the pink tongue in a sigh (realistically, that's when he'd growl and bite the finger off. Disturbingly hot, the thought.).

But. Instead of imagining his blood in Vergil's mouth. Imagining Vergil in the river of pain --

A flick of the blade. This is very very bad and highly disturbing.

“You are free to join me,” he says, like it doesn't matter.

“Dante,” Lady warns. She steps in front of him. He brushes her aside, has to.

“I'll come with you, yeah, sure, no doubt about that. Just listen to me for a second, alright? We'll close the portals and deal with the cult bullshit first and then I've got to get some shuteye, okay, just one night. Like this, I'm no use against him,” Dante's desperation sputters out, unwillingly ignoring Lady's visible indignation. 'S easy in the end, what with the way he feels when he pictures Vergil getting back to the place where he was turned into a tortured body without a mind. Vergil crying at the bottom of the world (if that's how it started, what, exactly, was done to him _later_?), alone, alone, alone. Doesn't help knowing it was by his choice.

Emotions have already left him, they aren't welcome to come back.

“I am more than capable of handling this on my own.” His tone lilts ever so slightly. 

Dante breathes in and out and counts to three. He manages to bite back the “yeah, and that went so well last time” only by letting out something less incendiary but more revealing.

“Somebody's got to keep an eye on you.” Before Vergil can decipher it properly − wishful thinking, thy name is something that begins with D and has a habit of ending in tears −, he forges ahead.

“Hang on; won't a big open gateway interfere with your business, too? Really isn't like you to make it easier for someone else to try and take over both sides in any way.“ It's clear to whom he's referring, but judging by how jittery Vergil's been about Mundus, the best bet might be to avoid using the name in vain.

“It is urgent that I regain what he has taken.” A pretty roundabout way to refer to his missing memory and whatnot, but it stands to reason Vergil isn't happy to let Lady hear anything confidential. That and admitting he's lost it took him nearly dying in the first place.

Being direct has never worked out with him. Let's deflect, then. “Is this you admitting wiping off the vermin and whatnot would take you too long? Didn't know you were such a defeatist, bro.”

“There are great many things you do not know about me.”

Dante waits.

“As it happens, I… am in your debt.” The sentence gets wrung out like teeth; sounds a lot like the tone he'd use back in the day when there was something allegedly bad tasting on his plate and palate. Dante would eat anything and find his brother's picky habits as weird as they were entertaining: the manner in which he'd scrunch up his nose, showing his age in at least something, was simply adorable. Coming from a person that's so expressionless he might as well be faceless too, it's not exactly that anymore.

“So you'll do it, hold off for a while?” Hope springs eternal.

“A day,” Vergil reminds stiffly.

Lady clacks her tongue and straps her weird gun to her back while walking to the exit.

“I can't stop you, Dante,” and her voice says she would if she could, “but you know what? As much as I'd just love to hear your excuses for disappearing without a single word for _ten fucking years_, I'm gonna kill some demons and do what I can to sort this clusterfuck out. There are three smaller gates around here and they're gonna fuck shit up if they're left to run amok. It's up to you to make the right choice for once in your miserable life.”

The sound of the metal door slamming closed behind her is loud.

So. Lady took this little vacation well.

(He knew she'd be pissed from the way Trish had reacted, certainly, but he didn't expect her to sound, well, _hurt_. It's completely unfair to her and everything she's done for him to have thought she wouldn't even notice him being gone, but there, that's apparently what he believed. She's a soldier, first and foremost, so she hid it until they were done with the situation at hand. 'Till they were done. He's not man enough to fix even himself, never mind this.)

And then there's Vergil.

Can't find a smart way to break the ice. “I swear I'm beyond ecstatic about you coming back to life, I'm just dying internally for some reason” doesn't really cut it. 

Vergil has always been stunning. Funny how it's literal now. His face throws him off; isn't this, again, what he's been asking for time after time after time since their birth? This and the Angelo and the wreck of a non-human in his mirror he would occasionally force himself to acknowledge, the image decaying too badly to ever truly become that of his twin. Differences. Vergil is different so he has to look different. But this different is different from the different in the past and while he's now certain he's looking at his sibling, he's unsure of who exactly it is that he sees in front of him. Who _is_ Vergil?

He settles for the arcane. Vergil used to like magic. Safer than most topics he has in mind, too. ”You seem to have an idea of what the deal with the bike was. I'm not asking you to explain it like you would to an idiot 'cause that's what you're going to do anyway, but I'll admit I'm pretty lost here.”

“How simplistic would you like the explanation to get?” Without waiting for a response, Vergil presses on.

“Once the artificial decay was gone, only the corruption that had seeped deep enough to become organic remained. The human side proved to be weaker to its effects; it seems half-demons can only heal when both sides are functional. Rebellion drew the poison out and provided some extra energy, but the body was left − unbalanced, which made the demon half expend energy even more rapidly. I suspect it would not have been able to survive alone, had the human parts of the soul been completely depleted.”

Dante probably shouldn't take the cliff notes version of the story at face value, but that's all he can currently stand. He must bite his tongue so that he won't remark on how he distances himself from the events by talking about a body, not_ his_ body, when its remains are still lying on the floor for them to see.

“Let's pretend I got that, moving on now; I thought the only thing capable of doing that was the tree you told me about. You know, regrowing lost limbs and organs and stuff out of thin air. Don't see any trees here, so what's with the deus ex machina?”

Vergil all but winces. “I _did_ tell you about that.” A tilt of Yamato.

“I have been theorizing Sparda used the fruit of the tree to enhance his own power. He would not have been the only one to do so, at any rate. This may give it some credibility, but I suppose we will never know for sure.”

“So like you said, the chopper was a devil arm.”

“Yes.”

“But that was 'not all there was to it', was it.”

“No.”

Dante breathes out.

“He really did lose, then. Is he dead for good now? Or, I don't know, do you think there are more arms prancing around with bits of his soul stashed inside them?”

“Father was powerful enough to use some of it to craft Yamato, Rebellion and the Sparda. Nevertheless, nothing of this caliber could be created twice even out of his soul, no.”

He supposes it's time Sparda did something of value. He sure as shit didn't put his soul into raising his children or doing right by their mother, so it's nice to know he had enough of it for something.

“Okay, I guess that's it for now.” An overload of information will be no use for someone as drained as him and it's not like someone as cagey as this Vergil is going to walk him through this mess in its entirety anyway. “Just one more question and then we'll go and save the day.“

“What is it?” he asks pleasantly. Now it's Dante who takes a while to speak. He tries to measure his options, detect any hidden meanings, but in the end it comes out condensed into the form that has been eating at him for a while.

“Did you know all this when you saw the bike in the underworld?” “_Or did you lie to me_,” he adds silently.

Vergil freezes completely.

“No.”

**_Then _****why** **_did you let me drag you up here?_**

** **

The silence that has set upon them rings hollowly. Vergil's stance hasn't changed at all, but somehow the posture reads as challenging. Self-protective, like Dante's something to guard oneself against. Instead of running into an impenetrable wall like he's probably supposed to, Dante's first impression is to interpret it as vulnerability, however minor. Dante is ready to drop, has been for god knows how long. If Vergil can't figure that out, this new set of eyes he's got is blinder than the previous pair. It's one thing if he thinks Dante is the enemy. He most likely does, all the evidence from since they turned eighteen points to that. But that's one thing. The second being: there's absolutely no need for posturing (and Dante would know all about posturing, wouldn't he) when he's exhausted and Vergil could wipe the floor with him anytime without breaking a sweat. So he reads it as a show of weakness, can't help doing so, and hates that even more than the hostility itself.

Like he would've ever truly raised a hand against his brother with the intention to harm him (it just happens because it's what he does, however much he tries). As if Vergil didn't know that.

Vergil moves and Dante almost expects him to clear his throat. Instead, he slashes the air into an open wound, Yamato whispering sotto voce. _Jump_. The portal spreads and spews out a wuthering sound.

“Well?” Vergil says, raising a brow again, and that's how they set out to do the thing, saving the world and so on.

Dante jumps.

\--

Back to the mining area. The demon is quick to materialize this time, patently excited to get some action. Cute. Dante tries to mimic its tail-wagging enthusiasm, but hey, he doesn't apparently have it in himself to feel grateful for the nth chance he's squandering.

“Sparda,” the ox roars. Most of the hovels have already burned down.

“Son of Sparda,” Vergil says while transferring his weight from a casual but regal pose to a sprawling battle stance. Balancing it has him spreading his legs that are still covered in cheap linen _wide_.

Dante shoves his attention back to the giant flaming beast so quickly that his neck actually makes a snapping sound that in turn makes Vergil turn his gaze at him, the last thing he needs right now. He, of course looking at everything else than him, doesn't see it, but he feels it graze him until he can force himself to concentrate on the portal dweller.

At least this distraction makes him forget the ugly singular form of the moniker.

“See? I told you,” he yells at the devil and searches for his guns. Not admittedly his best one-liner again but it's the best he can do, considering. 

The demon howls in rage and barges towards Vergil, having eyes only for him. Dante gets it.

Vergil lets out a surprisingly gleeful battle cry and triggers. Or, wait, well, doesn't, sort of. Does he?

It's his DT and also not.

See, Dante doesn't have a fetish for power like some people. Despises it, has lost everything to it. But this is something else. Usually, there's a bitter ting of it lingering in Vergil's aura, a corona of the cool rage simmering underneath. A hit off ozone that intensifies into a surge when he triggers. Now, though. Raw energy − high octane, explosive, heady in its sheer unrestraint− is radiating from him and vitrifying into the flaring blue flames, which surround a shape that is familiar but also _more_. Unmistakably stronger, faster, more feral. Can't map out all the details because he's tired, too close to the sun, because the most obvious one stuns him. (Humans have evolved to process information on things that affect their chances of survival and reproduction. His survival instinct being decidedly lacking, this revelation must have something to do with the latter urge.

He wants to fight him so bad.)

A tail.

Vergil has a tail now?

It's growing from his spine, getting gradually thinner from the part where it's inseparable from his back into a girth that's a bit thicker than Dante's wrist, approximately, before it expands into a sharp-pointed spike. The scales, also diminishing in size towards the end of it, look hard and cutting at the edges. There's some texture to them from what he can see under the petrol-like film that covers them, blooming in subtle kerosene rainbows; and still they look like they'd be sleek to the touch.

He means, come on −

Cool, and also really attractive for some reason. He considers pointing out how it makes him that much more feline, just to see him hiss and preen like a spurned cat, but the horny areas of his brain triumph over the amused ones and make him shut up by suddenly immersing him in water warm enough to be a little painful. It's just - ridiculously sexy. He doesn't know why it's something that makes him this stupid, but here he goes. Dante can picture it vividly: having beaten and subdued him with ease, his resounding voice against his ear makes his mocking vibrate in his bones, the tail curling around his neck as precisely as his hands would, tighter and tighter, harsh and tender, grounding him in something concrete while his head gets lighter, while the tip gets in deeper --

Fucking hell.

(_He wants him_.)

It's not like he isn't degenerate enough to have fought with a semi before. It's not that or even his nonexistent ability to focus on the target that bothers him; it's the fatigue. The girls keep jamming because he keeps having trouble with reloading, lacks the energy. After three tries he's pissed off to the degree he'd like to throw Ebony at the fiend to do _some_ damage, but he's afraid he'd miss.

Not that it's important − the fight is over in record time, before it has even begun. Dante trips and tries to avoid being squished to death under the demon when it stumbles back, hit in the stomach by the pommel of Yamato. Thanks for the heads up there, brother.

(So Dante's not able to read his moves anymore. Not a big deal.)

It's the only thing he gets to do. While he's picking himself up, the demon bursts into fiery shreds again, although this time it's just to die and not the return to the stone − well, to the underworld or at least limbo, maybe, because it's a portal; he isn't really beating himself for not getting that the first time around because he _was _carrying a more than half-dead Vergil around. So, the conqueror of whatever is done for. Adios, sayonara, good riddance. Would've been nice to actually observe how Vergil behaves in combat like this. Must be a thing of beauty.

Since there's no acute reason for him to keep an eye on his six when Vergil here can clearly do it better, Dante lets himself slump back down to the ground.

Vergil's shadow lands on him a moment later. This time he's human shaped. Almost makes him lament the loss of the visual.

“You are slowing me down.”

Dante smiles ruefully. After all this time, he has zero considerateness, but the bluntness, the total lack of kiddie gloves, practically feels like a hug. “Told ya. I'm not lying about needing the rest. If we wrap this up quickly enough, I'm in top condition tomorrow, though.”

“At this rate, we will be nowhere near closing the actual gate tomorrow.” There's a pause indicating a sigh. Dante interrupts him before he can say anything. Has to.

“When did you grow a tail?”

Vergil looks at him with slightly squinted eyes. “I have always had it.”

Sure, be contrary if you must. “When did you _find out_ you have a form that comes with extra appendages? I've seen your regular devil trigger and it ain't this.”

Vergil mulls over his reply. “Before I turned eighteen.” It's vague enough; that's immaterial. What he means to tell him is that he had these spiffy powers when they fought back at Temen-ni-gru and he never used them against someone who had only discovered his plain-ass form by being impaled on his own sword like a sucker and had no experience using even that.

Vergil was holding back on him.

His brother naturally uses his shock to his advantage.

“I will close the smaller portals myself. I trust you to be able to proceed to the true Hell gate without my supervision.”

“Race you there,” he shouts at Vergil's back to prevent himself from tackling him to the ground and refusing to let him go on his own. There are no guarantees he'll come ba−

This one-sided codependency isn't getting any less meddlesome any time soon, is it?

When he hears the sound that signals Vergil has opened the gateway, he closes his eyes.

Takes a while to get up.

\--

Vergil once told him the name Dante comes from Latin. One day, ages later, he's hit by a spell masochistic enough that he finds himself a dictionary, looks it up. Durans, all longs vowels. Present participle of a verb, whatever that means. “Enduring”, says the Latin. Lasting, sustaining, even becoming cruel. He looks at his hands that shake, sees no strength, only a curse. Power − he's won, essentially, and this is what he gets, this is his victory, this is what his brother had wanted and paid everything for. _(Tell me; was it worth it?)_ What doesn't kill him only drags him, little better than the mangled carcass of a roadkill, forward under the wheels towards the next point of no return, only to witness breaking point escaping from his grasp once again. One day his body _will_ finally fall apart; this is what he has to be waiting for.

Enduring, says the Latin. _Durans_, whispers the voice of a dead child. _perfer obdura_.

Right. Yeah. Passion, he has learned, is another word for suffering.

(Thing is. Vergil, Vergil's name. Vergilius. Between the lines, the dictionary smirks a sly smile at his faintness. The name − origins, meaning − is a mystery. He is not superstitious, but.

Some things are written in stars.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The root verb of the word “durans” (Durans > Durante > Dante) is famously used in a Catullus poem (carmen 8), which has also been used at least in part 1 of this series. The line used here is the following:
> 
> "--  
(sed obstinata mente) perfer, obdura  
(but you, with your mind hardened) carry on, endure  
\--"
> 
> The origin of the name “Vergilius” is afaik thought to be Etruscan, but I've yet to see any theories about its meaning. The word “passion” does actually come from a verb that in Latin is “patior” and in Greek ”πάσχω”. They've got a lot of meanings (I think “undergo” would be a good general one to be used here) and suffering can be one of them especially in later texts.  



	16. xvi. Father of Hungers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends, Romans, countrymen: happy 100 000 words! Let's celebrate by being mean to Vergil. 
> 
> (So, I kinda broke a finger somehow and had to avoid my keyboard for several weeks. Fun times.)

They meet in a clearing.

His sense of time being gone, he goes out on a limb to claim it's after dawn. There's not a whole lot to see around them, but he gets the feeling there might be something beyond the edges of his vision. Hard to see with the shadows; maybe trees, a forest? It's not important, he thinks. Could be stone columns as well. Ledges of rock, buildings, ruins. This is not about the place or the when.

He finds Vergil shrouded in the darkness, leaning against Yamato that is propped between his hands in a peaceful resting pose, both the man and the weapon almost lazy and content. He's looking like he's waiting, for him. It reminds him of something, but the image escapes smoothly into the dusk. It's alright: Dante was looking for him too.

But. Something is − off about Vergil. There's not a hair out of place on him if you ignore the still unusual length of his locks, so it's not that. It's not that the planes of his face have changed in the meanwhile since they haven't: it's still narrower than his, stark and thin, almost hungry for something. Younger in several meanings of the concept. Then again, the likeness to their teenage years is far from perfect. Most notably, the hint of youthful roundness in their old face has been chiseled away to reveal sharpness that has always been present in him. Violence is the way Dante navigates through the word, so he is not surprised when it reminds him of a high-wrought knife: a tired cliché of a metaphor and yet he can't shake it. The poetry enthusiast in him would be insulted to know he's being compared to a blade, its teeth hiding in his jaw and his cheekbones and the cut of his brow. How dreadfully unimaginative it is to wax about the metal used to make the handle and his steely eyes - to perceive his mouth as a finishing touch like a jewel or the splashes of gold on his katana (it's pyrite, isn't it. fool's gold and pearls for swines). Which is more insulting to him: that his admirer uses such trite turns of phrase to describe him or him being his flesh and blood?

But Dante knew he would look like this, isn't shocked by the expressionlessness either.

_A presence in the dark, looking at him expectantly. Something unmistakable. Something that knows his name. A stare that feels wrong for reasons he can't put a label on. Blue_.

He has the impression he should be saying something to him. He should ask him something. Should he? All words die in his lungs but it must be alright because he is meant to be here, like this.

“Dante,” Vergil says. His voice is the same it was earlier, too. He heard it say his non-goodbyes just a moment ago. Not what it was in rain, at Temen-ni-gru and in the limbo, and nevertheless, it leaves no room for doubt. This is a voice that could tell him myths about the ancient rivers of Hades or whispers verses Dante never really understood but appreciated anyway because _he_ found them meaningful. It's dusk and dawn and the soft darkness makes him wish the voice would curl around him like it used to in some previous life.

There is nothing to fear in the dark. Except −

Except. Dante fears Vergil as much as he loves him.

Creeped out by feelings he can't name, Dante acknowledges him by calling out his name. He almost wonders if his voice cuts through the dimness.

Vergil reacts slowly.

“I know,” he says at last. Dante waits, holds his breath, waits for him to elaborate. He doesn't: Vergil leans on his sword and rests his eyes on him, half-lidded but attentive. The shade is right, so why are his nerves building up a tightly coiled crescendo of tension on the background of his mind?

“Errm, what? Cut me some slack; I'm too tired for your games right now,” he says.

Is he even blinking? Hard to tell somehow.

“I know,” Vergil repeats, his gaze not moving an inch and his words retaining their previous pace.

“Hey, fuck you too. Seriously, though: I think we have − things to do. Stuff. You know. Uhm, things,” Dante says, disturbed but trying to fight against it. Yeah, he's sure. It's important. There are − things. To do. Stuff. “Come on, let's go.” He highlights this by swinging his hand in a gesture meant to be nonchalant and urging, maybe even end the arch in flipping the bird. It ends up in his hair, which must underline the unnerved sparks in his mien.

For a moment it seems like Vergil doesn't hear him or alternatively doesn't give a damn. He stands and looks, looks and stands. Then he sweeps Yamato to the side and walks up to him. There's a slight echo to his gliding steps. He halts in front of him on the line between close and too close, for a moment resembling a pillar of salt again. When he speaks, his focus is still on Dante's face.

“I know.” It's a whisper now. It flows straight into the marrow of Dante's bones and blooms into a corpse flower. Dread. This is going wrong and he has no idea how to salvage it.

“'Scuse me − What? I mean − stop it, don't be like this,” he says, begs.

Vergil tilts his head, regards him silently and then turns to leave.

No, not like that.

Dante grips Vergil's wrist, the right one. His hand fits around it with ease. The ulna and the radial bone rub against him, a sharp friendly cat beneath his skin. When there is no Yamato cutting into him to make him withdraw − no, to block him upfront −, he gets afraid.

There's a loud snap.

Vergil's hand comes off and falls to the ground in a cloud of snow. There's a clear cut, a crack, running around the edge of Dante's grip − the part he held onto has disintegrated, taking the rest with it. Spiked with ice-cold panic, he blindly grips the unblemished upper arm, only to make the area shatter into dust as well. His biceps, his shoulder, his side − all crumble under his touch, under Vergil's watchful eye.

_But they went through this already_. Dante's palm hovers in air just above his hip. But they healed him, didn't they? But he doesn't remember how. When. If they had. Why. The hand spasms vehemently.

Vergil, missing the right half of his upper body and most of his stomach, leans forward to meet the juncture between Dante's neck and shoulder. His lips brush against Dante's ear. They have no temperature at all. 

“I will tell you a secret,” he whispers sweetly. He grazes the helix, blows the words into the shell of his ear. With his other hand he tips Dante's head to straighten it. The finger shatters upon impact.

Dante's lips fly open, but he doesn't know what it is that he tries to let out because Vergil stifles them with his own. The kiss is dry and leaves a layer of bitter white on their lips. He tastes like he has been eating chalk.

“I,” Vergil says, licking both their mouths clean only to stain them again and pressing his mostly undamaged hand flat against Dante's chest before going slack against him, ”will not let you help me.”

With a sigh, he turns into ash that gets all over his palms, his throat, before the lights disfigure him too.

Dante twitches violently to find himself lying on his back on the ground. His sight is powdery white for three frantic, squelching heartbeats until it clears in the daylight and he starts to regain control over his body. Slowly; the air smells of soot and he's choking in the scent. There's Temen-ni-gru in the fire-razed buildings and their remains and there is neither rain nor alcohol to wash it away from him. No Vergil to wipe it away with his tongue. Fuck.

Lying flat on his back on the ground, he thinks he's been here before. Déjà-vu.

And so he has. It's a recurring dream. Details change every now and then but the song remains the same. He pretends he only remembers the fun ones, like the one he had back in the island where Vergil drowned him inside his own head with his fluids, a creepy premonition of the events about to follow now that he finds himself thinking of it. The only problem is that Vergil comes to him to die in his waking hours as well, dead but not dead enough.

While getting up, he reminds himself it's a good thing he doesn't believe in auguries. Otherwise, he admits he might be a little ruffled (his mouth is _so dry_). As it is, he's merely worn down. Alone too, he notes. The ox has stayed slain and Vergil has fucked off to do whatever. He turns around on his heels to inspect the area and senses his fatigue bear down on him in the swaying of his steps, the slowness.

In all seriousness: its bad. Not the nightmares, those are nothing new by now − the fact that he's tired enough to nod off like that. One of the only functional aspects of his instinct for self-reservation is not going totally belly up on famously hostile ground. Or who knows, maybe it's the lingering sense of pride his brother has instilled in him that does it. It has never rubbed off on him to the degreed he'd develop one of his own, but Vergil's deathly sin is powerful and its fading shadow whispers to him occasionally. All the same: he will not object to something killing him as long as it's a worthy opponent, and thus far he has really met one. Actually, no. Two.

Right. Shit.

Mundus. Vergil wants to kill Mundus. Again. Saying he has a bad feeling about it is the understatement of the millennia. It's just − there is absolutely nothing to indicate it would go better now than it did before. Does he have plans? He never tells. Does he have plans that are feasible in any way? Impossible to predict. Could well be that he has no actual endgame in sight, just flounders towards an unrealistic goal because it's what he has always done; or then Dante is projecting, he doesn't know, he's never had any aspirations. What difference does it make? It looks bad and it will get worse and then he'll look for him through the mouth of his bottle while trying to forget about him for one blessed second. _Breathe_.

Alright. Even when everything is leading to unavoidable tragedy, it is best to take one step at a time. For the time being, the next step is to find Vergil, everything else will follow. Really should write that self-help book one day.

He takes another moment to collect himself. It largely fails, but the show must trudge on. At least he's fairly sure he wasn't asleep for long. The sun is pretty much where it was earlier and no dew has gathered on him. Not too late to make a total mess of things yet. Shaking the last vestiges of the vision off and accepting his fate with the grace of someone who has nothing to lose, win or give, he marches on.

(The Vergil in his dream lied to him. That, he thinks, was not a secret.

So be it. They'll self-destruct together, then.)

\- -

Locating their meeting point is surprisingly much, much easier than expected. Dante is too fucked up to search the whole island for someone who has regularly put a lot of effort into disappearing without a trace and remaining undetected, so the discovery is a relatively pleasant one.

He cusses and tries and gets his trigger working on the third try. It sure is a relief even if the modest design has no extra limbs, sexy flames or other grand accents (gosh, isn't he self-conscious all of a sudden): there would be no one to spear him with sharp objects to provoke his system into it if he failed at the most basic of tasks. Clearly Vergil expects too much out of him, he thinks as he flutters his fins experimentally to calculate their current ability to bear his dead weight. Actual sleep would be a good idea. Getting up in the air is a hassle too, but once he's dangling far above the ground in his full demon glory and blinks, he realizes things have gotten not only worse but also better in a way.

While he was having a nap, the local zealots managed to open the genuine Hell gate. Due to the aura it exudes, this much is obvious even without seeing a huge black rectangle rising above the roofs of the buildings in the center of the city proper. It's similar to the one below him − ah, what? The fire demon is a clear case, but at what point did his brother destroy the stone as well? Glancing down reveals that the smaller monolith lies in neat blocks, each one exactly the same size and shape. Whatever. His brother's anal-retentive OCD and Yamato's acuity and speed are old news.

So yeah, the Gate of the gates. Unless Vergil has already perished and they've cranked his katana off his cadaver, this probably means that the Sparda was an adequate substitute for Yamato and the mission to conquer the world is a go. How a great big portal that probably cannot be controlled by mere humans translates into that either makes some sense or it doesn't. Ain't his place to judge.

Alrighty then. There are coincidences and happy accidents, certainly, but there's a limit to everything. Dante knows how these things tend to go. It's bad news for the city and the types who are moved by casualties and other sorts of collateral damage to, you know, have a gigantic door pumping the mostly isolated island full of monsters, but it makes life easier for him. For the lack of better directions, he decides to head out to the source. Portals − they're to his twin what glowing lamps are for moths, anyway.

Traveling while having several feet in the grave, it turns out, is grueling and thus pretty nice. He has to concentrate on how the muscles in his back work to move his wings; otherwise he'd most likely drop like a rock. Not exactly rejuvenating, no: he feels his already pitiful energy reserves deplete with each flap. Beats having to use his head, anyhow. He wouldn't like what he'd find inside it.

Will Vergil incapacitate him, which should be about as toiling as shoving him to the ground with a tap on the small of his back, to make a fresh attempt at harnessing whatever energy these porticos hold?

Will he do it to get back to Mundus, either to join him or to wage war against him?

Yeah, not worrying about anything is a party.

Predictably, it comes to an end post-haste. Dante does drop when he runs into an invisible wall soon after setting forth: the surprise has him flailing and losing a few feet of his flight altitude. Slightly pissed off at the hindrance, he tries to fly against it like the mindless invertebrate he is and finds out the barrier lets him through easily enough. When some actual pressure is applied, it merely breaks into barely discernible tremors that even out soon after he has crossed to the other side; it has solidified again when he knocks it with his fist. Huh. It really is a thin wall, not much good for preventing any stubborn demon or other flying chickens from passing through it. Weird.

Hold on. What if it's not supposed to do that at all?

What if it isn't a wall but a thread, in a figurative sense? Something to guide him, a signpost. Now that he thinks about it, the spellwork at play is distantly familiar: both subtle and intricate and flashy as hell. Kind of cool while simultaneously being very, very obnoxious.

It's Vergil.

Oh, of course it's his doing. Their plan of meeting at the gate has apparently changed and this is his way of letting him know that. How he's so convinced of this being his handiwork is a question that bugs him less than it should; he's experienced this before somehow (_when?_), and under the circumstances that's good enough. And sure, it has been the modus operandi of his sibling to send literally anything else to relay his messages to him, ranging from Arkham, mister Uncomfortably Appreciative of Vergil's Physical Form, to magical constructions and suspiciously lame demonic would-be assassins. It's probably worth it even when the whole ordeal turns into a childish adult version of Chinese whispers because it's a minute he doesn't have to spend in Dante's presence. It isn't much fun to think about, but at least it's nothing actively malicious either.

Is he supposed to follow the wall to the left or to the right, though? Just like big brother to leave him twiddling his thumbs because of unclear and/or nonexistent instructions, not that him using his words would yield drastically different results. This time around, there's a distinct lack of convenient phallic structures on the horizon too, damn him. Since his initial guess went wrong, Dante figures he ought to do the opposite − a good general principle to adopt when it comes to his life, honestly −, so he turns to the other direction. When there's nothing keeping him from proceeding, he deduces it's likely the right one.

He gets the feeling his temperamental Ariadne is luring him straight into the den of the Minotaur instead of leading him out of the maze. Dante, a poor man's Theseus, follows the call in spite of crashing the bash blindly and receiving neither weapons nor affection from his traitorous beloved. If this is Mundus' doing, somehow − he can't jettison the doubt that begun to gnaw his bones back in Hell and never stopped −, he has chosen his bait very well. What else is there for him to do?

\--

The wall takes him to another fortress, this one on the coast above the water and connected to the island by a lengthy bridge. The conjuration disintegrates at some point when he approaches the headquarters, but that's fine, he doesn't need it anymore. The building has several distinct parts and many towers, but he's pulled to the circular edifice facing the sea like a lone lighthouse. By now, he's beginning to see what's going on here. Well, feel. The visuals come when he lands on a sizeable platform near the top of the building, above most other decks spiraling the walls, but the gist is apparent without them.

See, there's a gigantic white statue in the middle of the spire. Jesus fuck, the thing does not resemble Sparda as much as it's probably supposed to. Given the fetish for these townies have for his old man, the inspiration is obvious, but the mug and the tasteless haircut, oversized horns and kitschy wing accessories are an insult to the bloodline. Actually, he's getting some serious Mundus vibes from the color alone, never mind the disturbing angelic themes that have absolutely nothing to do with Sparda and his spawn, honest to god devils. The good folks are using some serious artistic license and it's making him want to throw up; seeing distantly Vergil-like characteristics slapped on Mundus' to make an unholy amalgamation (lovechild) of them is decidedly not good for his stomach. At least the fucker himself had had the decency not to do that with him and his mangled corpse: the Angelo was characterized by its darkness and that's as far as he's willing to take the thought, fucking hell. This is going to be poles apart from the wholesome family bonding activity he never really anticipated but apparently still wanted to have, he can already tell.

But yeah, the really important thing about the sculpture is the fact that it happens to be a demon as well, just a hand-made one. And ugly. It's mostly dormant, but it has got some crystals all over its marble-like body and they are already pulsing with vitality that in all likelihood has been produced by sacrificing innocent Athenian virgins to it every seventh or ninth year or whatever. Seems they're here exactly on time to blow it up before it truly wakes up. Yay.

The wave of artificialness almost drowns out everything else, Vergil's presence included − it's like Lucia, just a million times more potent and malevolent. Must be radiating from the false prophet and the army of lesser manufactured devils parading around it, wearing white-gold armors and wielding mechanic lances that might actually do some damage. He spares them half of a glance before tuning into what his starved braincells find worthwhile.

Vergil is fighting the demon troops on the other side of the area than Trish and Lady. He's found time to get a change of clothes in addition to disabling the smaller breaches, although his sartorial options seem to have been limited, poor bastard. The striped gray trousers, which seem to be less fond of his legs than his usual tailored gear in their ill-fitting looseness, are accompanied by a black peacoat with wide tacky lapels. Dante thinks he spies a pocket with a zipper when Vergil makes a turn to stab a demon in the back. Such a travesty. Dante might look like a sack of potatoes with his getup and unshorn hair, but at least for him it's a step up.

He does miss seeing him in blue. The closest they've been to that during this odyssey was when he had demon guts all over him and then Dante had to go and ruin it by spilling his red ones on him.

Vergil knocks a trooper back with a swing of his sword. Ah, he has procured himself a pair of leather gloves too. If Dante had to guess, he'd say he cut most of the finger columns off himself since there is no ventilation on the back, which is really precious even when he'd only do it to get a more secure grip on Yamato. He does wonder sometimes, though; Vergil used to be somewhat tactile in their youth, so him feeling the need to get as close to her as possible would not be entirely out of the question. Dante's fingers itch.

Some armors lumber closer to him and Vergil puts them down with a mechanical kick while simultaneously keeping the closest one engaged with a couple of jabs at the thing's head with the hilt. Stylish or not, it seems that he's got this.

“Hey, guys! Clearly you've got everything under control, but is there anything I could do?” Dante yells through the thick of the fray while making his way closer to his twin, trying to catch Trish and Lady's attention for a brief pow wow. The women seem to be relatively well-informed about this mess: safe to assume they'll have some sort of idea how to make cleaning it up quick. His eyes hurt and the migraine will make him beg to be hit in the face by Yamato too if it gets any worse. Sleep soon, please.

Vergil slashes the thing in front of him in two with one clinical strike to the middle. The halves fall to the ground with a loud, hollow chime. There is nothing inside − the horned head, which should not come off as no necks were severed, rolls around on the ground and stops at Dante's feet without leaving the faintest trace of blood behind. Empty.

Vergil's eyes are glassy when he turns towards Dante.

Dante startles. The moment passes. Vergil's gaze sharpens quickly enough that he could nearly have imagined his frozen expression: one blink and his usual keenness clarifies his irises. Actually, his stare becomes more piercing than regularly, as if agitation makes him overdo it and build up excessive defenses. Unnerving − the disquiet, born in a flash, is there for a reason. His skin seems just a touch clammy; cold sweat has drawn a glossy stripe on his cheekbones, temples, the bridge of his nose.

Dante thinks he understands when he catches a glimpse of the material lurking beneath and between the plates, the grill on the helmet. Dark matter, reminiscent of muscle fibrils streaked with purple veins among the black ones. Where has he seen this before? (where _hasn't_ he seen it before. In his dreams. Twitching around his sword. In the observant darkness between Hell and this realm.

In Mallet.)

Vergil's eyes are no longer glazed when they settle on him. He opens and closes them in a way that looks entirely manual; there is a lull in his movements, time slowing down for a few seconds. His neck bends into the smallest of nods, silent acknowledgement. Then he's back to pommeling a metal suit in the gut all natural like.

Hi, Dante thinks back, as eloquent inside his own head as in person. I missed you, he adds, because it's as true as it is pathetic.

“We'll deal with the mooks. You − turn off the Savior,” Trish commands and interrupts his jerky stream of consciousness with a yell and an angry headshot. Lady, on the other hand, ignores him altogether. She's gotten better at close combat, he notes idly, watching her dodge a fist and wrench a lance away from another demon. She's never needed him. They've been better off without him. Good.

The Savior. So that's what the golem is called. This innovativeness involved is something else. Dante nods back at Trish in affirmation − useless, but he does it anyway − and tries to attach his attention to the titan.

Vergil, seemingly a bit more stable now, joins him after a short pause. Dante exhales for the first time in forever.

Turns out Trish did a shoddy job of assassinating the old man at the church. If he hadn't seen her shoot him straight into his sanctimonious kisser with a mean shotgun − goddamnit, _his_ mean shotgun −, he might feel the need to goad a bit. Currently, the preacher is standing on the giant forehead of the Deliverer with a freaky halo of light pouring out of his unnaturally recovered body. He's got a face again: good for him. The halo is glowing golden, but there's an undercurrent of red and the shape of the radiance is all wrong. Something that is supposed to be holy should have a soft, delicate glimmer to it, not flicker like violent hellfire. This is, of course, fine by Dante, since real sacred stuff wakes up his hay fever and might sting should it come into contact with his skin, not that he wants to be touching this creep any time soon. The stola and the ear flaps flutter in the rhythm of the light emanating from him. Very ominous and all; Dante is waiting for some pompous Latin chanting in the background for an epic touch. Vergil isn't in the mood to provide that, though, so they have to make do without.

The man is not alone.

When he sees the boy on the ground, he doesn't for a second think it's Vergil shouting at the priest. Not a copy, either. He's not even seeing double, as there is only one demonic colossus and one megalomaniacal prick on top of it.

Sure. He does notice the similarities instantly, no lie, but even quicker come the differences. Under the shaggy grey hair, his blue eyes have a different, narrower shape, much like his upper lip that lacks a pronounced bow and fullness as well − this is emphasized by his flat cheekbones and a jaw that's too wide and boxy, more like Dante's than the slimmer, angular face Vergil is donning now. His nose seems to be smaller and less prominent in profile; his complexion is coarser and less ghastly; he has a hint of a stubble and highly animated features that seem to truly convey emotions and stuff. Using words like that, it sounds like he's saying the guy is unsightly to some extent when he frankly isn't. It's a perfectly good-looking bloke in a rougher, rugged way, probably, to someone who can tell. Dante can't. He's too deep in the brotherfucking hell and every dissimilarity seems like a screaming defect. Weirdly enough (or not at all), the kid appears to be at least partially demonic − the scaly glowing hand, which the guy hasn't bothered to cover with his edgy hoodie, sort of is a dead giveaway even when Dante can't detect his energy one bit under all the fakeness in the air, broadcasted by the masses of the armor demons and the giant fake god looming over them.

What he can say is that running into this dude would've hurt like a bitch only a while ago. “A while” as in ten years, officially. As it is, his run-down brain and confused body seek Vergil, his soul a calm illuminated place in the middle of the storm. Deep inside, there is a part of him that's tugged towards him like it's the simplest thing in the world, as if he had never ruined it, a heartbeat twinning his own. It meets its echo − there is still the surface of the mirror separating them, Vergil keeping his distance, but the glass is no longer empty. No mistaking him for anyone else, not like this.

No. The kid is not Vergil, that much is true. But where does that leave them?

_Logic_, his mind says. _You have a brain. Use it._

Why would there be a kid that looks a lot like his brother even down to the hallmark coloring and inhumanness − his brother, who in turn takes after his father who sired only two sons? Why would he be so similar but not enough to be any kind of doppelgänger? Especially hen Dante himself has been committed to the sinful ways of Onan, spilling his seed to the ground only?

_Think about it_, says his mind.

_No_, he answers. _I don't want to._

Vergil − He can't have − Why would he − Who

A scream pierces his head.

It's the guy. While Dante was busy with trying to avoid obvious conclusions, one of the large jewels on the statue's body, the one on its forehead, has… opened? The shiny hard surface has sort of melted in the middle into a whirl of white light. There's a girl dangling from it helplessly, her body visible from the midriff up and her hands hidden beneath the solid part. She has reddish-brown hair − maybe it's what people call auburn, who knows − and a white dress with old-timey puff sleeves.

Ahh, it's the choir chick from earlier. Seems she and the priest had a falling out at some point. Maybe it has something to do with the preacher dying: people take stuff like that badly sometimes. At least Dante's relationship with his twin has never progressed to the hostage drama level, although that might have to do with no one being willing to pay the ransom for him too. (Is it justified to call it a relationship _with_ him when the vast majority of is existence is defined by one party being absent and most of it is entirely one-sided? Saying it's his relationship _to _Vergil feels fairer in a way.)

“Kyrie,” the boy shouts at her. He's obviously beside himself; he uses the word like a mantra, an open sesame to unlocking each and every door ever made. The useless sentimentalism makes Dante uncomfortable.

“Hey, Kyrie!”

A healthy pair of lungs there. Does she even hear him?

“Kyrie!”

Κύριε ἐλέησον, Dante remembers from Vergil's little sermons. His Greek is even worse than his Latin, but some things have stuck; hear a sequence of syllables often enough and they attach themselves to you even if the meaning remains unclear. Kyrie eleeson, Lord have mercy. What a weird name for a girl.

(Κύριε ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν, his memory supplies. _Lord have mercy on my son_. Dante _is not_ thinking about this.)

The old man goes on about the Savior combining mortal bodies into one, which sounds rather raunchy for a thing a priest would say. Something something Catholicism. Apparently, this union is what will form the core of the giant, so it might be a good idea to prevent that. Hmm.

The teenager isn't very amused by the little speech and hollers a rude comment; this, in turn, seems to anger the priest, since the damsel in distress is sucked back into the sapphire without a further warning. The boy curses. Definitely fuming now, he draws out his home-made sword with a curious throttle on its handle and barks back something more or less incoherent. He couldn't make the plot any more obvious if he tried: clearly, he's dating the girl or at the very least wants to be, so being the manly almost-man he is, he's doing the daring rescue thing to be a hero in her eyes. It's a trope Lady hates; makes sense Trish would boss Dante around and make him deal with it to spare her the nuisance.

That doesn't fully explain why the gal has been used as the lure. To attract her boyfriend, naturally − but why him in particular?

(Because he looks a lot like Sparda. Because −, ghh, Dante very much does _not _give a fuck.)

“I'm afraid it's too late. But − although still incomplete, this is your chance to catch a glimpse of the true power of our Savior!” the old man proclaims, jumps down on the orb and disappears under its surface as smoothly his captive did. This seems pretty cowardly even for such a cliched villain, which means the sensible option to take here is to stay on one's toes.

Of course, that's not what anyone originating from this cursed bloodline would do under any circumstances. Seems to apply to people with the trademark features in general even if the consanguinity is in question: without any delay, the kid proceeds to the head of the statue by using his nifty mutant arm to haul himself up to the heights. He makes his last jump high and long and raises his blade to a strike, ready to hit the dome with it. Got to give it to him, he's got decent enough reflexes; while he's in the air, the jewel glows white again and the shape of the young woman breaks through it, and so the guy breaks his pose instantly, yanking his weapon to the side and preparing to touch the ground with his feet rather than the blade and on a different spot than intended. And yeah, this is where things go wrong for him. Dante, who has no personal stakes in the scene, could see it was a ruse from miles ago − the giant awakens from its slumber and snatches the boy into one massive hand before he manages to land into safety. The following yelling can be heard even from the distance until it disappears abruptly. Must be due to the prey being absorbed, because when the palm opens again, there is nothing on it, not even a wet stain.

Just a guess: this is the key needed for a complete activation of the subpar Sparda replica. Dante's not the expert on demonology, but even he's aware devil arms and synthetic demons need something to power them and actual devils or hybrids could make for good fuel. Well, sucks to be him. As long as it's not them.

As expected, the sacrificial maybe-not-a-virgin gets stashed away and the old zealot returns to his post shortly, hammier than ever. Several exclamation marks are now audible. “Held back by love; such a shame. Still, I must salute a man who carries the blood of Sparda. When it and his sword are combined, we will be able to reach the final stage of our ultimate plan!” he declares with the mannerism that every cheap baddie uses in their hour of supposed victory.

The boast still makes Dante's blood run cold. He can't bring himself to care if some guy is dead or not − but what if it isn't just some guy? If it's true and Dante were someone capable of honesty, would he admit there's a possibility he might prefer him not alive? Sensing an imminent chance of introspection, he's glad the cult leader carries on babbling.

“Our glorious Savior will now be awakened and completed! With it at our disposal, we shall purge the Earth of demons and rule it with their power,” he raves. It's unclear if he's speaking to the boy, who may or may not hear him, if he has finally noticed the true extent of his audience or if he's simply bonkers. Doesn't matter, it's helpful for anyone willing to stop the thingie. Dante is not that person but since no one else is stepping up and he wants to go to bed asap, he could fake the interest.

“Should we get involved now?” he asks. No doubt his nerd of a twin has been more attentive during the spectacle. When he doesn't reply, Dante turns.

Vergil's good posture, one of his central trademarks along with the ever-present standoffishness, made its comeback a while ago. It's so distinctly him that a small deviation from it would catch Dante's notice. This… isn't small. His spine is currently so stiff a puff at his general direction would likely fold him in the middle. From what can be told about his body beneath the new gear, his muscles are tensed and ready to snap every which way. What Dante really, really doesn't like is that his eyes are a lifeless piece of plastic again. If he didn't know better, he'd say he's afraid of something. Shit, shit, shit.

Above them, the glowing cultist seems increasingly excited in contrast. He's hovering in the air expectantly and inclining his ears and flaps down towards the statue. When nothing happens for a while, he taps the tips of his fingers against each other to form a diamond, his fake aura crackling with long-suffering impatience. If he had a wristwatch, he'd be looking at it right about now.

Nothing keeps happening. Dante spends the time considering the merits of nudging the inert figure next to him. The cold sweat he noticed on Vergil has migrated to form a film on his flesh as well.

“What is this? The ritual is flawless and we have both the sword and the heir, as required,” the reverend bemoans.

Yeah, Dante thinks slowly. The Sparda is the real deal if what Lady told him is accurate, and why would she of all people lie about losing anything remotely valuable? Seems that one out of two is not enough.

“Have you considered you've got the wrong guy here?” he asks, baseless optimism creeping in his voice.

The priest jerks in surprise, having forgotten he's on the stage and hogging the microphone. Idiot. “But he _is_ a descendant of Sparda!”

“Apparently not,” Dante mutters and feels a large, jealousy-shaped rock tumble down from where it has been crushing his insides. The family resemblance is uncanny, but unless these morons are as incompetent at building functional demons as they appear to be at genealogy − somehow he doesn't buy that, not with the functional portals, not with the, the armors, not because he almost _almost_ came to the same conclusion himself −, it doesn't mean what you'd think it means. Why that'd be a relief, well, he _just doesn't know_. Maybe now he won't have to immolate himself just to avoid admitting how much the thought of Vergil − Vergil− − , how much the thought upsets him.

“Can we do something, now?” he asks.

Vergil twitches back to life with a voiceless gasp and draws Yamato out with a degree of fluidity that's almost normal. Perfect timing. “Yes.”

Music to his ears, that.

One of the gems happens to be near the spot where they're standing; it's shielded by those gaudy feathers on the Savior's shoulder, which is approximately on the same level as the block of cement underneath their soles. In the time it takes Dante to glance around and notice it, Vergil has transferred himself to it and struck it with the pommel of the katana. Makes a perverted sort of sense that'd be the way to unplug the thing. The quartz breaks into a confetti of glass shards; when the last of them hits the floor, Vergil is already onto the next one. Somewhere in the distance, the old man is squealing.

“You seem to be on top of things. I'll just, I don't know, sit this one out I guess,” he announces. Vergil, already on the upper level, disregards him completely if he even hears his comment, so Dante allows his cramping sinews to collapse again. Popcorn would be nice if he didn't suspect he'd inhale the kernels and choke by accident.

He doesn't trigger at all this time, Dante observes astutely. No scales, no surprise appendages, just a deadly man with supernatural means of transportation. It's not like he needed to do that in order to get rid of the whatshisname Conqueror demon − and it's not like Dante couldn't have dealt with it in his basic form either, had he not been mostly dead −, so it's a bit weird as well as a little disappointing. Hulking out would be a lot faster and they're both show-offs at heart, a pair of peacocks. Why isn't he flaunting his feathers and, uhh, tail? Having a coat with tails would add a nice theatric flair to his moves, too. Okay, this is mostly his dick talking.

He is very swift nonetheless, got to admit. Dante is having a hard time keeping track on him, so rapidly he teleports from one gem to another and wreaks havoc on them. The churchman seems to be having the same problem since he doesn't even attempt to follow him, merely wrings his hands and curses. For a holy person, he has a surprisingly filthy vocabulary and no qualms about insulting the mothers of others.

Vergil shatters the last of the crystals and reappears behind the evangelist. While he's no gentleman, he does have enough sportsmanship not to outright stick a knife in his back. Instead, he steps to the side calmly to alert the man about his presence and waits for him to turn to him. Naturally, that's what the target does when confronted by the feeling of having something lethal as fuck creeping on him. Human instincts suck. Vergil thrusts the sword into his stomach wordlessly, draws it out from his side in a splash of red on the white and lets the corpse fall back, deftly swiping the stola so that he can clean Yamato with it. The chasm is deep enough that no sound of the body hitting the bottom can be heard from here. First, he fixes the couple of wayward hairs that have deserted their ranks; Yamato flashes in the sunlight as he soothes her with his silky touch and lets red eat away the red. A blast of wind makes the garment flutter when Vergil lets go of it. This, if anything, is what they share: nonchalance at the face of inconsequential death. A life taken amounts to mild inconvenience.

Here lies an evil man, destroyed by things eviler than him. Requiescat in pace.

Sheathing Yamato, dusting his newly acquired jacket and popping up the collar, Vergil leaps down with his usual poise. He steps so lightly that no echoes catch him, not like in the nightmare. For unfathomable reasons, he looks highly unimpressed to find his little brother lying on his ass; telling that apart from his plain old bitch face is an art and Dante is a connoisseur. He considers mock saluting him even when the show was good, the duration notwithstanding. Sadly, it's not worth the effort. His leaden limbs weigh a ton and so the dignity of picking himself up immediately has long since sailed past him. His stupid body doesn't realize the fact because it keeps battering his veins with the need to have a round against him, see what he looks like when he's forced to lose the coolness.

Like this? Yeah, no dice.

(_Mundus could do it at any time,_ a part of him suggests, _has done it before_. Please, the rest scream, shut up.)

Judging by the lack of clamor, the women have finished their part of the job as well. If he looked around, he'd likely find a field full of a whole lot of nothing: the helmet at his feet has dissolved without him noticing. Au revoir. Now that the racket has calmed down, the surly teenager peeps out of the hole in the forehead and shortly climbs down with his paramour in his arms. Reminds Dante of a territorial groundhog or some other burrowing animal, cute. The guy side-eyes them distrustfully but stops paying them any attention in favor of trying to wake up his girlfriend very quickly once he's back to relatively solid ground. Dante leaves them be; turns out there's nothing to connect them apart from the weirdly specific and highly improbable looks, right? It's not his business if he doesn't get paid or doesn't concern the branches or even the apples of his family tree.

Vergil opens his mouth but closes it immediately when they hear the sound of someone approaching. Several someones.

“Did you close the smaller hell gates? The scientists used those to create these pawns, so they could still be working even if the Savior is gone,” Trish says. It's sort of sweet that she still follows their unwritten code of not paying that much attention to Dante's nakedness or inability to stand on his feet.

Since Vergil doesn't appear to be social enough for this − when is he ever? −, Dante sits up with a grunt. Everyone else is used to this shit, but his sibling is clearly finding interacting with something he can't look down on for extra dramatic effect troublesome. The headache twinges nastily between his temples with the sudden movements. “Yeah. The actual gate still needs closing, though.”

“With Yamato, it will not take as long as disposing of this idol,” Vergil notes absent-mindedly, brushing her scabbard with his fingertips.

“Great, so we'll get to that next,” Dante reassures them. Well, Vergil will and he'll tag along, seems to be the case. Ugh, standing still blows.

“Then the only thing left to do should be fetching the Sparda and exterminating any leftover demons. You'll be in your regular shoes soon,” Trish says to Lady. The latter sighs and puts her weapon away. “Great. I think we're done with this bullshit here.”

She slips a hand beneath the fabric on her side, searching for something. Unexpectedly handy for the outfit to have hidden pockets. After a moment of rummaging, she throws a small object at Dante without looking at his direction. His reflexes don't work − the thing hits him in the forehead and bounces down to draw a curve on the stone under their feet, eerily similar to the way the headless helmed had tumbled. When he bends down to pick it up with another grunt, he could swear it's warm for a beat.

It's a coin, one of those he received from the broke client. The Trish-like figure pressed on it seems to wink at him.

“Since you can't make any decisions on your own, you're gonna be needing that if you ever want to crawl back to the human world. You're welcome,” she says with a scowl.

“Lady −“

There are a lot of things he probably should say, but he can't work out what those things are. He also ought to ask about the state of the business, if it's still running, his office, merely for his own sake. The bills. Morrison. The coin and why she still has one. This stupid gesture. If they're going to leave the shell of el Salvador just lying about (hey, the townies could advertise it as a pilgrimage site). To the shock and astonishment of absolutely no one, he doesn't say anything. Ultimately, he guesses he does not care enough. Lady snorts in derision.

“Go. You can barely lift your ass, you need the rest before you get your back stabbed again. I don't give a single fuck about your excuses, especially if you're just gonna be gone anyway.”

So he goes, pocketing the token after a pause. Lady doesn't look at him when he leaves: he knows this because he does turn once and sees her shape lean against Trish, waving the gun at her to demonstrate something about it. Trish tries to meet his eyes but he snaps the back before the glare reaches him.

He goes. Vergil makes his steps just loud enough to signal he's following him.

\--

”They don't get much in the way tourists in this shithole, do they,” Dante remarks when they turn around yet another corner without spotting anything that resembles a hotel or the like. Vergil makes an acknowledging noise that sounds like he's not listening to his inane chatter at all, just reacts to the cadence of his voice. He doesn't really know why he's with him now, but he's not going to question it. Yamato was as ruthless in dicing up the megalith as promised; Vergil made an elaborate net of slashes at its general direction and next he knew was that it had become another orderly pile of blocks. Not a lot to complain about their efficiency. The problem is that she's no use when they have no idea of where any motels or hostels or whatever might be located in this artificial downtown area and when there are no maps, guide signs or tourist infos to make them any wiser. Walking it is, then. His blisters have blisters by now.

At least the demons have mostly migrated to other pastures. Perhaps they should flip the coin for directions. When in Fortuna…

“You could sleep outside,” Vergil suggest, as if it's in any way reasonable.

“The looks are purely an aesthetic choice; I'm not a hobo. Besides, aren't you supposed to be the civilized one? I told you I'm not going to lie down on the street and allow any demons feast on my corpse. There are still some of those little vermins scuttling around.”

“You will hear them coming.”

“Sure, but I'm supposed to get rest. You know, sleeping. Also known as not being on guard. Sleeping with one eye open does not proper resting make. Why are we even having this conversation?”

Dante feels like a cranky child with all his petulance, but honestly, he'd be about three minutes from throwing a tantrum if he had the strength for that. In his current state, he'd prefer to simply faceplant on the street and never get up − perhaps brother dearest would be charitable enough to kindly sweep his bones away at sunrise if keeping up all night to watch his sleep is beneath him. Can't let Vergil know about how close he is to the edge and giving up, though, because he might reconsider his generous offer of dragging his useless sibling to war with him, so it is what it is.

Still. Trust him to make words when it means nothing at all. Fucking Vergil.

“Well, here is a hotel,” Vergil notes and marches towards a building that actually does look like an operational guesthouse and not a mere façade like the edifices around it, mostly because it's somewhat shabby and worn-down as if it has truly once held some humans inside its walls. There's a hand-written sign hanging above the crooked door that says “Hotel, open” in several languages. Gives some credibility to the theory of it having been in occupied at some point unlike the others. For a crazy cultist, it might be reasonable to have a town built entirely out of lifeless props. Not that far from the logic involved with building churches, actually, is it? If it's high or fancy enough, the masses will believe they're that much closer to salvation and don't notice their lives don't get any better in reality. That is not to say he's different in this respect: he has dawning suspicions that this shiny form of Vergil is a façade designed for him and just like everyone else, he's ignoring the warning signs because the pretense is easier to bear than the alternatives. At least it's a pretty one indeed.

“Vergil, wait! I have no money. How are we going to get a room now? I don't know if you realize this, but running a business is not charity and they'll gonna be wanting some dough for their trouble,” Dante yelps while making an attempt to spring forward and ignore how uncommonly convenient this stroke of luck is. He can't really bring himself to believe it, of all things, is a trap, but this is nonetheless too easy. They look weird and aren't local, so maybe they won't be let in by the staff, cash or no cash. If there's even anyone home − a lot of people seem to have been evacuated while all the drama took place. Well, the hotel being abandoned would solve the problem of financing the stay, wouldn't it?

Vergil turns his head to look at him.

“I have money.” He even extracts a pile of notes from his hilarious bezippered pocket and waves it impassionedly. Dante appreciates the efforts he takes to get to his level in communication, he really does.

“Oh, awesome. Do I want to know where it's from?”

“I do not think you truly care.”

Dante thinks about it for a nanosecond. Yeah, he has no high ground to scold Vergil for stealing shit. These people have bigger problems than losing a wad of cash and some rags anyway with the rebuilding and burying the dead before they rot and attract rats and possibly more demons. Should've thought of that before messing with hellspawn. “Mm, you got that right. Okay, let's go.”

Miracle of miracles, there is a girl at the otherwise empty lobby, almost cowering behind the desk at the sound of the door opening. She's dressed in a similar white-gold outfit to the girl who had roleplayed Jonah and the whale with the giant statue: if Dante hadn't seen her twice, he would guess they were the same person, even with the completely different hair colors and faces. He yawns and stretches and lets someone else do the talking. When perfectly polite Vergil orders them a single room, she hands them the key mutely and takes the money without even counting the sum. Having eyed the stack briefly, Dante decides the tip is big enough to make up for having to interact with them, although its ability to compensate her being scarred for life is in doubt. Got to be on their best behavior, just to be sure.

They turn towards the stairway − no elevator, great − while Vergil inspects the keychain. Out of the corner of his eye, Dante can see the hotel girl making a sign of the cross. Maybe the building isn't even haunted. Jackpot.

“Room 412,” he says. Dante groans.

“The fourth floor, then. Wonderful; my feet are about to come off any second now. Will you be carrying me the rest of the way if they do that too soon?” Even this hallway to the stairs appears to be endless. Plenty of room at the hotel California again.

Vergil squints. “This is frivolous use of Yamato,” he says, nonetheless unsheathing her and opening them a handy makeshift lift. Keeping up appearances of normalcy doesn't really matter when there's no one to witness the act. The girl can't see shit from the lobby and Dante seriously doubts they've got any cameras in this hellhole. The four initial slashes in air expand into a door-sized purple gateway that flickers and fizzles like an unwelcoming pet.

“Shall we?” he pushes when Dante makes no move to use it.

“Thanks,” Dante mutters while climbing through, although the feat is less trying when the entrance has no threshold. All in all, it's more thoughtful a gesture than he expected. Vergil must be getting sick of his whining. Whatever works.

The corridor he stumbles into in a blink is just as moth-eaten as the reception. There are actual cobwebs in the corner gathering around a withered houseplant, too. Dante leans against the muted-orange wall and closes his eyes, leaving Vergil to deal with the rusty lock and probably leaving behind a Dante-shaped hole in the weave of dust. This is a porn scenario right here, he thinks and suppresses an expression he can't name. It's weird that doors are a thing for him; after all, Vergil has been treating his life like a revolving one, walking in and out at will. (Maybe it's being pushed until he has his back against the wall, forced to stop fleeing because it's something he can't manage on his own. Maybe it's just the physical closeness. His palate is parched − desperate for the smallest of things, too much stimulus after a drought.) But here he is, too tired to let the thought develop any further than simply being acknowledged. Here he is, with his brother. The blackness crackles over his eyelids. It feels strange to be alone inside his own head for a change: Yamato is giving him the silent treatment seemingly permanently and Vergil has drawn some shutter in front of his face since he senses him only externally now, as a loud reflection. He listens to the clatter and forgets himself for a moment.

Eventually, Vergil taps him on the shoulder to invite him in. His skin absorbs the touch even through the clothing. Man, he really ought to get laid.

There's a large double bed in the middle of the room and that's all Dante has the energy to take note of. Without bothering to kick off his pinching shoes, he crumbles on the hideous purple cover with a shamelessly pornographic moan. Smells musty. The springs of the mattress join in his clamor and for a sizeable depression in the middle of it. There's only one pillow and it has holes in it. Simply put, it's the best thing ever.

Astoundingly, he is not asleep the minute his back hits a relatively soft surface. He blames his mind, the piece of shit. Then again, when he has put so much effort into staying awake and going through the required motions, maybe it's natural that it takes time to pull it to a halt.

“So, this suicide pact of ours. The larping the other Dante and_ the Purgatory_ thing. Is it still on? What are we going to do and when? How long do I have here?” Channeling his inner three-year old with the question time: some sort of arrested development going on, no doubt. The filter between his mouth and skull has always been flimsy at best and easily loosened by lack of Z's anyway. Of all the things he wants to wring out of Vergil, the ones he voices aren't worth mentioning; what else is new? Stupid and meaningless is good. Stupid and meaningful will drive Vergil away.

Tell a story, Verge. Sing.

Vergil settles next to him gingerly, likewise in full attire. His profile looks softer even with its prominent nose and brow ridge when it's filtered through the dim orange light streaming from some rickety old lamp on the night table. It seems to blur the dark half-circle under his eyes, at least − a strange thing to have, given that he's freshly reborn. There's an air to him, quietness. No use trying to poke at it, it'll dissolve like a bubble and Dante will have soap in his eyes.

The staring might bother him, but he doesn't say so.

“At this point, the exact time is not important. If you are still willing to accompany me, we will leave tomorrow. The plan remains the same: I must kill him at any cost,” Vergil says. His tone is deliberately polished and soothing, but what he's saying is doing to opposite of what's intended. If his goal is to put Dante to sleep, this _doesn't help_.

He swallows a sigh. Wants to be angry.

Doesn't look like Vergil has learned anything at all: he's just as ready to gamble and throw away his life as he was when he kamikazed into the abyss without looking back. The unspoken conviction in him tells there is nothing Dante could do to change his mind. Well. Time to pretend it comes as a surprise.

If Dante is his first name, the second one is resignation. He tears his gaze off of him. Vergil has accepted this as his fate. He'll make it his to watch it all unfold, then.

“Whatever rocks your boat; your vendetta, your rules et cetera. Tell me one thing and then I'll go to sleep.” Greedy. He smiles at the blots dampness has imprinted on the ceiling. Nothing ever changes. “I need a bedtime story, remember? Humor me, for old times' sake. So. With the statue… I mean. The boy − let's be honest here, it bothers me. Why did the ritual fail? Point is, the kid does look hell of a lot like the two of us, so I find it pretty unlikely that he isn't related to Dad in some way. But it didn't work. Why?”

Silence follows. He closes his eyes and counts. Old habits die hard. Should be picturing sheep, but now that this is out in the open, he'll see it through. Figuratively.

“I will reiterate: I am undergoing severe amnesia,” comes the answer, pronounced very very clearly. Dante feels his brows furrow in annoyance. Why would this be a sore topic? Usually, he likes to brag when others are missing knowledge he has.

“Yes, I know. I'm not, though, so I do remember what little you told me about it. Also: that's not an answer. In any other language than Vergil speak, that's what they call beating around the bushes. You know something, or have a guess at least,” he accuses.

Vergil makes a resentful noise. “I would prefer if you did not ask. Let the matter lie.”

“For now,” he supplies when he catches Dante's newly sharpened glare.

“But was it because of him? Don't need the whole story now if it's that's too hard for you, but this much even you can do. A simple yes or no, come on.”

Vergil bites his teeth.

“I repeat: I do not want to discuss this_ now_. Use the time you have wisely, Dante − rest. Heal your wounds, get strong.”

Jesus Christ.

This little admission must cost him an arm and a leg (har har. What the fuck, brain? not amusing). Vergil doesn't back down from a challenge. That's what he does now, nevertheless, no matter how glib he is about it. Fuck.

What about this is so damn touchy?

“Fine. But if I'm going to Hell for your sake, I'm going to be wanting answers at some point,” Dante says and lazily points a finger at Vergil. When the pointee doesn't react, Dante lets his hand fall on the bedcovers, around the middle of the mattress. He's probably exhausted enough not to roll all over it and the object of his wet dreams in his sleep, thank god for small mercies. Hnnh, sleep. Sounds good now. Anxiety eats up energy super quickly.

He startles from his mild slumber when Vergil makes a throaty sound that is accompanied with him picking the hand up in his own.

“What is this?” Vergil says in an utterly toneless voice, gripping Dante by the wrist and pressing his thumb on the edge of his palm, the opposite of gentle.

Oh. His palm. He lost his gloves in Hell and never got around to finding new ones like some.

His palm.

His throat jams.

For a long time, Vergil had no eyes. He apparently did not see it even when he did, he _was_ dying. Seems that Dante did not think of it at all, did not think Vergil would notice, would care.

He attempts to swallow. The way is blocked. He's not lying on a ratty mattress in a lukewarm hotel room; next to him, he's lying naked in snow. Sometimes, the fire in Vergil burns cold.

Vergil wants answers. Dante −

can't give them to him.

“Nothing.”

“Just an old scar.”

Vergil's hold on him turns tighter. He doesn't attempt eye contact; in fact, he looks nowhere near at Dante's face at all even when he's answering his question. The way his head is tilted makes his lashes shade his eyes, but it doesn't take a lot to tell they're still measuring the expanse of his skin.

Does he remember?

“If you cannot overcome weaknesses like this, you cannot protect yourself. He will tear you apart.” Vergil's voice is dry and devoid of any expression. Suddenly, the fingerprints against him turn scorching like a furnace blistering his hide, the touch intolerable. Sometimes, he forgets the ugly.

He doesn't. Why would he.

Good.

Fuck it, fuck him.

“I'm so sorry, I don't remember asking your opinion on anything. _I_ did just fine against him last time, unlike some,” Dante snaps, forcibly pulling his burning hand back. The scar is emanating neuralgic ghost pain and he wants to curl his fingers to try and extinguish it, but covering it in front of him feels too revealing. He won't strip out of his skin when it's the only thing preventing him from catching hypothermia even if speaking suffocates him.

Vergil sits still and lets his arm fall back to his side, gaze rooted on the same spot in air, now empty. He blinks.

Unable to share the space with him a second longer, Dante rushes drunkenly to the other side of the room while muttering something about taking a shower and a leak before going to sleep. It's energy he did not expect to have: it's adrenaline, his faulty fight or flight reaction kicking in. Against all odds, it seems that he still has one, as dysfunctional as it is. It's found his last limit (Vergil has found it, has seen it). _Flee_.

He's pleasantly surprised by the bathroom door not shattering when he slams it closed behind his back, which slides down on its own initiative. Sitting on the floor and wolfing down oxygen, he hiccups with stifled laughter. Overcoming − fuck. He has tried, but his life is not a victory march and he's never gotten over a single thing, allowing Vergil to walk all over him as many times as he pleases. Hah − and what does Vergil know about closure, he who has made so sure he'll never lose anything by prizing nothing? He does not remember and does not understand, but he's smelled the blood in the water like the piranha he is. No way out now. Eventually, he'll know − knows now, doesn't he, but would he be so cruel to _ask _if he did, he does now, he would. His agitation refuses to quiet down so he lets it wash over him until the roar makes him overwhelmed, dull and numb.

This is ridiculous. It's just a scar, after all. Just a physical symptom of everything wrong with him. He resists the urge to bash his head against the tiling. With his luck, it would merely gain him another lasting blemish for Vergil to marvel at. He's not worth it.

Somewhat surprisingly, his naked skin doesn't sizzle and hiss when cold, iron-smelling water from the shower hits it. The taste of blood mixes into the chalky one still lingering inside his mouth. The soap spills all over the floor when his scar throbs and makes the hand forcing it out of the bottle convulse and he thinks some of it gets into the corner of his eye as well. It feels sore. The noise around him almost stifles Vergil's heartbeat in his ears.

This is ridiculous.

Congratulating himself on not slipping and cracking his head open but being unwilling to return to the other side of the wall, Dante rummages through the small mirror cabinet above the sink. Not a lot to write home about: tiny shampoo and or/shower gel bottles with pungent, flowery smells; a comb in plastic wrap; a forgotten condom. What a joke.

He holds a cheap disposable razor on his palm and slowly raises his eyes to meet the gaze in the mirror. The facial hair is ridiculous too, another blatant manifestation of his downward spiral. Might as well. Ritual cleansing and whatnot. He could become a new person. He could slash open a carotid artery.

He focuses on the strokes of the blades against his skin, loses time by disassociating and comes to only when his clean-shaven features startle him. It's him, but who is that? He hasn't recognized himself in years because he has existed only in relation to someone who stopped existing. His history isn't any less the truth merely because it turned out to be a lie.

Yeah. Even sans the horrible beard, what is clear is that it's not Vergil looking back at him. He feels a profound sense of loss for something he's never had, will never have. His image will forever be only his now. Vergil never lived past twenty and even if he did now, his visage would never be this. What's sad here is that it was never true, not even way back when. Them having the same face was always untrue. When he saw Vergil's trigger for the first time, it felt like this. Mourning. Their true colors are and have always been different. It was always there, Dante was simply too blind to notice.

He used to ask for this.

(He had felt _betrayed_.)

This is. He is a joke. Pathetic. Sorry about the yelling but unable to back down. Cornered. Not crying. Still a fucking idiot.

Tired.

Fact is: Vergil wanted to leave him and did so repeatedly. He left him to deal with it and does so as many times it takes for either of them to turn to dust and stay that way. That he now laughs at it is what hurts the least. (God, he really did love his genuine joy. It's washed away by his unamused and entirely mechanical laughter, his proud back against the chasm. _Unfortunately, our souls are at odds, brother._)

Dressing himself is easy with years' worth of practice. His hands are stable when he slips the shirt over his head and wrings water out of his pants. He gets by.

Dante rests his forehead against the door for a long second before opening it. The paint is flaking and sprinkling flecks of white on him, calcined lime idling on his tongue. He can do this because he has no options. Should he linger too long, he suspects Vergil would just walk out on him without a word. He hates him but would hate himself even more for not sticking with him.

Honestly, he also has to collapse and sleep,_ now_.

And so it goes.

He's way too drained to come up with any wacky scenarios of situation in the bedroom. By now, it should be obvious the world doesn't operate with rules he's able to understand, but come on, there is still a certain horizon of expectation at play. If he had given it any thought, which he didn't, not really, maybe he would have pictured seeing Vergil on the bed where he was left; maybe he would've migrated to the armchair in the corner, perhaps disinterestedly flipping through the New Testament these weirdos have deemed a necessary addition to the décor even with their devil-worshipping ways, just to kill the time Dante took to have his most recent breakdown. What he doesn't expect to see upon opening it is the shadow cat he fought back at Mallet. It greets him with a raised tail, drawn back ears and an open maw. Lots of pointy teeth are smirking at him.

In his memories, those he gained on the unforgettable island holiday and those been trying to purge most actively, it is less… material than the animal in front of him. It had no fixed shape even when it wasn't switching into a huge flytrap or a club; difficult to get a good look at it, especially when he mostly spent the time with it firing into the distance in the hopes of hitting it by sheer laws of probability. It's got the purple-black color and friendliness down to a T, but that's where the alikeness mostly ends. The cat currently giving him the stink eye is stockier and far more solid and its muscular sides covered in unfamiliar reddish markings that glow almost as brightly as its eyes. He isn't sure why he he's so sure it's the same individual or even species. Not to impersonate a biologist, but the one on the island was more of a sabretooth than a panther, wasn't it? It also used to be a lot more docile, at least until Dante decided to open fire at it. This isn't exactly what a happy cuddly curious feline looks like.

He's thinking too much. Here's a simpler question: Why is it the first thing he's having delusions about on this fine evening? There are plenty of safer bets.

“You may want to avoid sudden movements, pal. He's pretty feisty for a cat, that one,” someone drawls out from the direction of the bed.

The croaking voice apparently comes from a shiny blue-feathered bird sitting on Vergil's lap and apparently finding it highly comfortable: unlike the cat, it's all but purring. It takes him a while to notice it because he is distracted by how stiff the body of his brother is once again; the back against the headboard is as straight as the planks used to make the bed itself. His mouth hangs barely open to indicate he might be breathing. Just like his eyes. Sleeping with his eyes open. This is a bad day for him.

The bird. There is a bird on his lap. It's a familiar face as well, so to speak: it kind of used to have several back in the day. While it still has an excessive amount of eyes and beaks, they now form two eye-like clusters and a single mandible-like maw. When Mundus had decided it had outlived its usefulness, its plumage had been brown and it had been considerably bigger − it's almost like the animals have changed proportions with each other, because there is no way the ghost staring him down like it has mistaken itself for an attack dog would ever fit into his arms. Speaking of arms: the feather face is holding the ball he's spotted a couple of times in its claws. The orb flickers a violet light on and off, as if in a warm greeting.

A hasty look around the room reveals that the Angelo itself has made no comeback like one could expect, not that an unconscious Vergil is that much better. No demonic presence apart from the two of them. Curiously, even the apparitions of his past foes don't register as demons to him in spite of looking the part. What are these things and, more importantly, what are they doing to Vergil in this wacky little daydream?

“Hey, asshole, it's rude to just stand there and stare when you're spoken to. I know you're simple − and I'm being really nice here, really generous − but I also know that you, unfortunately, do know how to talk.”

“Sorry, I'm just… I thought I had quit hallucinating some time ago. I now realize that was a stupid assumption. Thanks for proving me wrong,” Dante says, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand without really noticing it. The mirages refuse to disappear. The cat growls menacingly and the bird chirps out its distaste for him.

“Alright then. I attempted the civilized way and you did your thing, so I've got carte blanche to treat you like the animal you are. Shadow, bite him,” the bird says. Dante jumps at the words but is too slow to prevent the feline from sinking its teeth into his shank. It's not vicious enough to sever his leg off, but it's certainly not a playful nibble either. He attempts to shake the cougar off but it holds on to him and makes a low, threatening purr that gets the louder the more he tries.

“Auch, what the −“

“See? Not hallucinating,” the pidgeon croons. It's way too smug about this.

“You made your point − hey, son of a bitch, that _hurts_. Tell it to get off me,” he yelps. Pathetic.

The bird has too many eyeballs to tell if it's rolling them, but the intent is nonetheless there. Faking deep contemplativeness, it passes the sphere from one foot to another a few times while looking at Dante's struggle with a tilted head. It takes its time.

“Let him go. Maybe he's learned his manners now and we can finally have a discussion like grownups,” quoth the raven with a sad voice. The persistent little barnacle bites down one more time for good measure before the teeth come off.

Dante rubs the poor mangled area. He'll survive, it's just the principle of the thing. “Thanks, I guess.”

The bird sniffs. “Are you gonna be this useless all the time? I'm having a hard time figuring out how boss could think you'd be any help here.”

Oh. So it is the same demons.

“Boss? Are Mundus' underlings? Step away from him, now,” Dante says slow and clear while summoning Rebellion. A lot more work than it's supposed to be, that. He's so dizzy he might be holding it upside down.

“No, dumbass, I'm talking about your big bro. And I'm quite happy where I am, thank you very much,” it replies, sighing theatrically. Dante's not convinced; in previous life, the thunderbird was willing to literally give its life for his master. He assumes a more hostile position while inconspicuously checking he's wielding his piece right. He is.

Keeping its many eyes fixated on the massive magic sword, the bird measures him reservedly. Apparently, he somehow manages to be threatening: maybe it's the crazy people air he must be oozing out in waves. “You know what, Dante? This jealousy thing got old like years ago, so could you just listen for a sec, even though I'm sure you'd like to sit on him yourself?”  
  
Something inside him snaps.

It's one thing if Vergil is aware of Dante's sordid feelings for him. But. But. The knowledge alone will not kill him. What will, however −− Does _Mundus_ know about them as well?

_Fight_.

“Hey, wait, you idiot, _stop_, you fucking psycho −,“ the bird cries out when he charges off to strangle it. Rebellion is − somewhere, abandoned in his mad dash, his bare hands meet its sleek sides and search for the neck, ignoring the claws scratching his writs and fingers raw, something sending fresh bolts of agony in his leg again. In his frenzy, one of his elbows ends up knocking Vergil in the stomach. Immediately, he wakes up with a winded gasp; the creatures have melted away quicker than Dante's jamming brain can keep up with, so he's left to squeeze the air above his chest.

“Vergil? Is it you?” he calls, pressing his hands on his stomach to − he doesn't know, to check his breathing maybe. His pulse pelts against them wildly. He makes an affirmative sound.

”Since when do you have pets?” he asks just to get rid of the shaky feeling on his vocal cords. Vergil looks at him with total blankness. “Seriously, what the hell was that?”

“I −,” Vergil begins, but a forceful grue rips through him. Something in his demeanor changes.

“I, I don't remember falling asleep,” he says, picking at the edge of his coat to mask the tremble running through his body. Combined with how unfocused his gaze is, the gesturing makes alarm signals blare in Dante's head.

“Happens to the best of us,” he mutters while sitting on the edge of the bed, slowly, so that Vergil won't spook. He does look ready to lash out and do something stupid. He looks feverish. Panicky. When Dante tries to calm him down by touching his arm and anchoring him back to earth that way, he lets out a cry.

“You don't understand,” he slurs with a bloated tongue, “what makes it trigger is not only slee− rrr, too late-- has gone off.”

Wait.

Oh no.

“The failsafe.” Dante startles; when he turns to check Vergil's eyes, he sees how his pupils begin to dilate. For a moment, it is unbearably erotic to watch how his eyes darken in faux arousal, but in a couple of breaths the feeling is replaced by dread. The blackness swallows his irises and starts to bleed into the white sclera.

“Fuck, you're right. We've got to − Vergil? How do we survive this?”

Unblinking, ink-colored eyes stare back at him.

Having briefly seen Vergil in berserk state when he got rid of the insect-like demons in the underworld would make him doubt his ability to deal with him a bit even if he was in good shape himself (it would be an interesting fight under different circumstances, but now is not the time to be horny about things). Now that he's decidedly not and his brother might also be more willing to use the overpowered super mode he has developed in secrecy and has had a lot of time to perfect, this really has the makings of a catastrophe.

“Restrain me,” Vergil beseeches, his pitch as distorted as his contorting spine and unfamiliar in its desperation, “use Rebellion to pin me down, now.” Panic blanches his skin and makes the platysmal bands on his neck stand out sickeningly, like gills or something trying to break through his skin once again. Black eyes, white skin. But they went through this already, didn't they?

Luckily for them, Dante's body has gotten better at doing whatever Vergil has told it even if his mind is not there to catch up with everything. He pushes Vergil on the proverbial pillows to lie on his back none too gently. It's easier than anticipated: Vergil goes totally slack for a moment until parts of him start to tick, a wave of little twitches running through him in disorderly series. It ruins the display of him on a bed Dante might otherwise admire a second too long. Instead, he exhales and seats himself on his stomach, legs astride. He has bones now, Dante is forced to acknowledge; his ribs poke him and tell him he is still too skinny, which, unfortunately, will not slow him down in any meaningful way.

He makes a sound that's an unholy abomination between a gurgle and an unintelligible word. Yes − time for the next step.

Dante grabs his hands and crosses them at the wrists while summoning Rebellion from wherever it ended up and trying to forget the latest time he had to use it on Vergil, his mouth. This time he ought not to bleed black and this should not be enough to finish him. Somehow, he is not very confident.

He adjusts the angle of the tip so that the wound will run vertically and in the middle, making yanking the hands free more difficult and reducing the possibility of him accidentally chopping them off. They wiggle helplessly but the tugs keep getting more severe and strong. Soon, he won't be able to shackle them with his grasp alone. Next step.

He wants to say he struggles. Vergil, after all, is a struggle. He wants it to be hard, harder than it is. But Rebellion bites into him effortlessly, bone and flesh. Like always: like it was made for this, like Dante was. He can deal with there being no purpose to his life. If it's this, however, everything falls apart.

His blood is hot and sticky, clinging to his slick hands as he pushes the blade deeper, deeper, until the pommel meets the knot of his wrists. Apart from the distressed panting, Vergil is silent, but the trembling is only getting worse. His legs are starting to kick under him. Dante rocks with him and feels seasick. Somehow, he still thinks of doing the same with his ankles and Yamato. Must be the imagery of a crucifixion flickering in his mind. Κύριε ἐλέησόν μου τὸν ᾰ̓δελφόν. Ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς. Have mercy on my brother, on us.

Vergil growls when he picks her up from where she has been leaning against the nightstand. It's pure, primal possessiveness; makes the hair on his arms and neck stand up both in fear and envy. An unhealthy thing, wanting to be claimed like that. At least it makes him hurry to pinch his ankles together with fumbling hands.

He honest to god screams when Dante pierces him with her. (_When he's done with his eyes, he penetrates Vergil's chest with her. He cries blood and bleeds bile. The three lights casting their color on his face sting in their brightness even when he will_ _never be capable of seeing anything again.)_ He's slipping to the world of hallucinations again. Executive function - gone. It doesn't occur to him to wonder how well the soundproofing keeps blocking their voices, the bed pounding against the wall and the floor. They are the only entity in the world, a bubble in time. Him hurting Vergil. Vergil being hurt by him.

Vergil writhes violently, nearly strong enough to throw him off. He leans forward and presses Rebellion down with white knuckles and perspiration clouding his vision, tries to keep it down and them in one piece. He's overdosing on the scent of him so much that it loses its meaning, too much of a terrific terrible thing.

Of course he wants to hurt Vergil, in a sense. The need to fight him was a thing long before the urge to be fucked into dirt by him after the roughhousing had even begun to develop. Would be a lousy duel if he shied away from pain anyway. And that's what he admits when alcohol ignites the misery in his veins: that he loves him and wants him. Blood on his hands, he sees himself for what he is. That it's not the whole picture; things get even uglier further down the road and he has only glimpsed at the bottom layer before flinching away from the feelings hiding beneath his flimsy veneers of a wannabe human.

This is Dante, isn't it?

The rock bottom. At certain points in time, he's felt like causing him pain, for hurting _him_. (Which, the fact obvious with the painful clarity he has now, would be an advanced form of self-hurt as well.) Sometimes he's happy that the depression makes it impossible for him to feel anger. Then there are the more morbid fantasies of a demon, naturally: sinking his teeth into his shoulder to hear him cry out in agony and pleasure. Digging his claws deep into his back so that he'll be rougher with him and make it be more real. Biting his lips to draw blood, forcing a connection − having pain inflicted upon him in reverse; Vergil under his skin in any and all ways. Anything to make him pay attention to him (funny how he can't stand it when he has it). He denies it from himself and anyone else, cows come home and it has gone nowhere. But it's not something he'd ever put into action. But he doesn't want to hurt him like this. Does his body? It's Vergil's blood, his pain, the control. The only way he's ever had power over him, his finger on his lifeline deciding if he lives beyond this second. That's the extent of his reach: he can't keep him alive but he can take his life. An unintentional revenge for not sharing it with him. Maybe he knew it was him underneath the armor, maybe he meant it. What he really does not want to examine is the possibility of it having nothing to do with his DNA. It, he fears, could be all him. Without truly knowing himself, who he is, how can he tell he didn't mean to kill him?

All he hears are Vergil's sobs and shrieks, how rapidly his heart beats. Dante can't tell if his body is aroused.

Goddamn it. This is so fucked up.

The being that a moment ago was Vergil trashes under him relentlessly. The thing about devil arms is that they keep wounds open longer, so it's anyone's guess if the liberal amount of blood that keeps coming from him is due to them or if he keeps ripping them open with his constant movements. Dante tries not to watch, has blood in his eyes. Has to look at his face. Zero recognition there. This is what they always come back to. The closest they can ever get, all of it nonconsensual.

Dante clings to Rebellion and tries to keep his head empty when he feels his strength waning, something akin to meditating. Somehow, seeing Vergil like this isn't any less devastating than witnessing him on the brink of death. The helplessness is essentially the same and makes him feel exactly as useless. Power is the only thing he has and the only thing he wants. When it's taken away, there is nothing left of him and nothing left for Dante.

Riding it out with him, Dante notes distantly that he hasn't seen Vergil using his spectral swords in ages. In a way, he understands this animalistic urge, if that's the explanation here − the need to feel things breaking under his own fingertips, a visceral need for concrete dominance. A well-placed knife could make what little focus he has shatter.

No, he doesn't seem to have the presence of mind to resort to such fancy tricks, Dante thinks when he watches him buckle and foam at the mouth. Perhaps he can salvage whatever there is to save.

Like every previous time, eventually he stills and begins to express signs of waking up. In a mirror image of the beginning of his episode, the blackness starts to retire like water going down the drain to reveal the white and blue it had obscured. His pupils looks darker than they were originally, but that must be the light playing tricks on him, his own mind and senses giving up on him.

Dante lets go of his sword but can't harvest the strength needed to yank it off. Instead, he rolls off of Vergil and slumps on the other side of the bed, shaking uncontrollably now that he can let the tension loose. Vergil's raspy panting is almost inaudible.

Vergil takes a couple of deep breaths. “My apologies. I did not mean this to happen, least of all now.”

Dante wants to scream. He can't. “This isn't your fault, you know.”

With a hoarse sound, Vergil breaks his right hand by pulling it and letting the blade cut it open from the side with a hiss. The crimson smell is so thick already that the extra doesn't even file properly. He manages to pull Rebellion away with the ruined hand and with the both of them free, Yamato gets off before he leans back on the bed again, rubbing his writs and pinching them together to help the healing along. His hair is wet and his mouth is red and it's still as gorgeous as it is tragic. The redness stabs him in the gut when he sees him wipe his stained palms on the bedcover discreetly. The Vergil from earlier seeped out black ichor and caught droplets of the crimson river in his hair, had Dante bleed his lifeblood on him when he tore his chest open and uncovered his strongest weakness. This time, it's all him.

With this image comes the knowledge that it's what was done to him, initially. It's an illusion but also true, it must be. His own devil arm blinding him. (-- _only one eye functional when she was shattered in two pieces, his last faith in anything being certain broken as easily as the surface of the water rippled around him when drops of his own fluids and shards and gobs of his body rained down upon it. Having the ragged edge shoven in the other socket hurt less and caused only some of the burning searing tears against raw tissue_). Crippled. Disabled. A self-imposed suicide by proxy. Vergil in red. Vergil in Hell.

He's ready to do it all over again. Fuck: Dante is here to drag him back there. 

Resignation. Dante is so sick of it and yet he'll do it, of course he will.

“It is.”

“That's bullshit, but whatever. This is just − I can't seem to help you,” Dante says. 

“This is not your burden,” Vergil says calmly. It sounds like something he has repeated so many times that it's become a fundamental truth.

“How did you ever get the impression that I give a shit about what you label yours? I'm making myself involved 'cause I want to. I just −,” his pinched voice grinds out before breaking. His cheek against the mattress is wet from the bleed. He's inhaled some of it, it's in his lungs.

“am really tired now,” he finishes.

“I know.”

_Please don't say that. _

“I don't think I can sleep in this bed anymore,” he confesses.

“Hnn,” Vergil intones. He moves; the bed shakes when he gets up. “Do you know how to pick a lock?”

“'Course I do. Switch rooms?”

“That would be for the best.”

His feet give out under him immediately and so he nosedives on the filthy carpet. From the floor, he watches how Vergil, his hair still falling on his face in matted clumps and with this tired frailty in his expressionlessness, snaps his fingers and lights the bed up in bright blue flames. They eat it away in a blink, not even leaving ash behind. On his way out, he scoops Dante from the floor and props him up on his shoulders; they stumble out of the room with four legs and one unoccupied arm, Dante using his to cling to the body of his brother for dear life.

There are no guards, pissed off neighbors or shadow cats in the hall. Vergil guides them to the door next to them. The journey feels roughly as longs as the time he wandered in the woods in the underworld. Instead of his own pulse, his lone companion during the ride, the only sound he hears or feels is Vergil breathing around him. His body is solid and unbroken.

In the end, it's obvious that he is in no shape to do anything to the lock, even stare it down angrily, so Vergil just carves it out with Yamato and one hand, leaving a neat little hole in the door beneath the plaque that spells out the number; his sight is swimming and he can't tell what it is exactly, can't recall the previous one either. Vergil probably didn't use his beloved devil sword to transport them because hopping between different planes of existence would tax Dante more than this method, for which decision he tries to express gratitude for but most likely merely ends up making a weird face Vergil doesn't even see. Every pore on him is exposed and aching and beyond his control.

In the neighboring room, which most likely is a clone of their last one but with an intact bed now, Vergil does useful things like pulling back the covers and shoving Dante in the bed after having accomplished that. He apparently never got around to putting his shoes back on after his shower, so no removal of them is necessary. The lights were never switched on, so when he's done with this half-hearted version of tugging his baby brother in, he settles on the bed next to him, in full blood-soaked attire and with the bearing of a person who has expected less than nothing and is nonetheless disappointed. Would be fun to observe how he'd react to Dante's normal living conditions and daily routines. The drinking, the squalor, the whole shebang of him doing his best to dishonor his family with every (in)action. “If you're weak like this, Mundus will tear you to pieces,” Vergil said. There's no way of telling him that's the only wish he could bring himself to truly have. But he's with him now. Got to enjoy the time before having to witness that being done to him instead of Dante.

The silence that follows is not an uncomfortable one. It's not like the ones in their childhood, back when they were aware of each other's thoughts and could actually communicate − or so Dante believed, isn't sure if still believes. It's still something.

Because Dante's mind really is conditioned to require a bedtime story whenever it is about to switch off in Vergil's presence, he's feeling somewhat restless despite everything. Might as well. In the darkness, he gathers his courage and spins it into syllables he arranges without thinking about it; there's a large looming shape in the back of his mind and it escapes him when he tries to zoom in on it. When he does it like this, piece by piece, sharing the stillness with his brother, steady breaths in the air, a weight next to him, concrete, he finally sees the outline he's lost in the excitement of the day and has been chasing for a while now. He looks at it until he can lie to himself that it's insignificant enough: Vergil − wants something from him. And; Vergil − won't leave tonight if he asks him this. Tomorrow is another question entirely and they'll never have a thereafter. In this moment when he's too spent to see any farther, the future being so open almost feels like a chance.

“Vergil.” It comes out like it always has. Having spent the vast majority of his existence refusing to give it shape, he would have thought he could never say it like he did, that the loss and betrayal and hate would twist it every time, make his name as grievous as his many deaths. But it's good. Like a rosary, a comfort. Vergil.

Vergil.

“Why did you want to come back to the human world?”

Vergil breathes, sits next to him. Doesn't leave.

He looks at him for a long minute, something quiet and sad behind his gaze again. It shines through so starkly it must be intentional to a degree, a deliberate crack in his defense. Dante bears it, resists the urge to bury his no doubt revealing expression. He has to know because every fiber in him tells it's important, that Vergil considers it such.

“Are you sure you are prepared to deal with that information?” he asks carefully, carefully.

No.

The words sober him up. Vergil seems to have expected their effect on him since his lips quirk into a somber half-smile. Even though it contains almost none of the components a smile is supposed to have, it is enough to draw the shadow of an indentation on his cheeks. This scrambles any overwhelming curiosity Dante might've had into the mush the last dredges of solid matter inside his head become. He shuffles to his stomach, doing it more slowly than he'd like to make it appear less urgent, entombs his face into the dust-smelling pillow and wraps his arms around it. His body throbs and demands him to break the painful want by grinding it against nearby surface; the bedsheet, his palm, Vergil's thigh. What he does instead is play dead for long enough that they both have to pretend he has fallen asleep.

Vergil has dimples now. When he tosses and turns in the twilight zone between wakefulness and agitated rest, it dawns on him this trip to Hell will truly kill him in every way possible.

Somewhere, at some point in the middle of the silence and the dark of the night that could as well be illusionary, Vergil's voice is almost hesitating.

“Goodnight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Roman poetry today, too much drama for that. Let me rant about other stuff, then.
> 
> Pretty much every DMC 4 character is named after a liturgy. I find the names quite weird since in Latin “credo”, for example, literally means “I believe”. The Greek word κῡ́ρῐε” kyrie is “(ὁ) κῡ́ρῐος” kyrios in the vocative form, which is only used when addressing someone − thus it's pretty much “you, Lord” (the feminine would be “κῡρῐ́ᾱ”, kyria, which is the “basic”/nominative form of the feminine word as well.). Makes listening to Nero's comments fun. There's a lot of Latin in the game in general but most of it is not very interesting (or I'm not interested enough in the fourth game when compared to the first three, whatever. There are lovely little things like Dante with Yamato, though), so let's just end this diatribe with the reminder that “Fortuna”, of course, is one name for the ancient Lady Luck, which admittedly is pretty fitting here.
> 
> Just for fun, I like to imagine Vergil's current attire looks something like the clothes “Vergil” in DmC wears, although much more understated and simpler (without stuff like the texture on the surface, blue highlights and the tails. And the fedora, jfc) because it's supposed to be something he'd be able to pilfer from Fortuna. Also because the outfit is pretty hideous as is. I have chosen to believe the talk about their sizes is a holy truth in any universe, though :DD
> 
> The Bible quote is from Matthew 17:15, this time from the Greek version (The Kyrie is also a song and whatnot, but I somehow find this extract more appropriate in the context of this story):
> 
> “Κύριε ἐλέησόν μου τὸν υἱόν ὅτι σεληνιάζεται καὶ κακῶς πάσχει, πολλάκις γὰρ πίπτει εἰς τὸ πῦρ καὶ πολλάκις εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ.”
> 
> “Lord, have mercy on my son, because he is a lunatic/has epilepsy and suffers greatly from his illness. Oftentimes, he falls into the fire and often into the water.”


	17. xvii. Wars Cursed by Mothers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christ, this took long. Didn't think March would be the pure chaos it was − I already had a backlog due to the finger injury and then got some additional work on top of that and then also got a bit sick. Not corona, though, so it's fine.
> 
> On that note: hope everyone is healthy and doing well!

Come morning, the rules change.

Storytime. Once upon a time, there was a maiden called Psykhe who was a one-dimensional character in a fairytale and as such, so much more beautiful than her sisters or any other mortal woman that she seemed to have no other attributes or personality traits at all. Through an arranged marriage, she got hitched to a god called Eros, who actually was a perpetually naked, sexy young man and not the chubby infant you sometimes see in paintings. Unfortunately, his poor wife didn't get the chance to enjoy this in the fullest since, due to some reasons that only make sense in myths, they could only be together by night when it was too dark to see him and they were probably too busy having sex for her to do much about it. But the whole “not being able to lay her eyes on the hunk she was banging” thing was seriously eating at her, and one night, armed by an oil lamp and wild hope, she creeped upon him when he was asleep and breached the shadows by shining the light on his face. And lo and behold: the dude was the god of love and sex so naturally he was a very good-looking specimen too. Because he was so brilliant in his beauty and she was so happy she hadn't married an uggo after all, she got carried away: she wounded herself with one of his arrows and spilled hot oil on him by accident. Disfigured by the heat, Eros dumped her promptly and fled, leaving his lovesick ex haunting the lands as a shadow of herself in her futile quest to find him again. And then they both became immortal somehow, had kids and lived happily ever after, and if you ask him, that's by far the most improbable part of the plot. But you don't. This is a children's tale and Uncle Dante the storyteller is a bitter, bitter old man.

So, Greek and Roman myths. Glorified fairytales, but that's high culture for you: damned if he'll ever understand it. But − contrary to the popular belief he's had a hand in cultivating, he is nonetheless rather well-versed in mythology and isn't as uneducated as he might come across to some. Usually, it's the impression he prefers to make: he intentionally plays dumb and has been doing it for so long that he keeps up the act even when among people who suspect he wasn't raised in a barn. He's rarely honest, constantly lies without remorse and gets caught almost equally often; acting stupid might give him the edge sometimes, but usually there are no benefits to it, other than the normalcy of doing things the way he's always done and at least trying to avoid reminders of why and how he became oh so cultured. By now, the particular pretense is a part of him and his personality, because that's fake for the most part as well, he pretends to have one. Unlike Pygmalion, fabled sculptor and fellow misanthropist, he's not going to fall in love with his own creations any time soon, though. He digresses. The point is: for someone familiar with all kinds of tall tales, Dante keeps getting surprised by utterly predictable bumps in the storyline. The spaces between night and day are transitional by nature, so while he doesn't exactly know what he expected to happen, there's nothing unique about his circumstances in the grand scheme of things.

What it means for him is this:

Dante wakes in an empty bed, of course he does. He knows this instantly when he comes to, even before opening his eyes; the empty space next to him emits a vacant sound, something like listening to a large industrial hall echo with a single stone thrown on the floor. He's familiar with those, empty spaces. The other side of the bed is vacant and light when he rakes through it with his fingers, the remains of sleep blurring his eyes and making his lids heavy. For a moment, it all plays out like most days. He feels the outline of his scar burrow its way deeper into his hand as it presses against the bed covers. Never really fits with the rest of his body parts. Couldn't deal with not having it. Another day, another set of hours to kill.

The second realization follows almost immediately. He is not at his office, neither under his desk nor in the bedroom upstairs. This is not him in his natural habitat. Different sensory feedback, no hangover from his latest binge. Blood's there, but the pungent, omnipresent smell of bile and longing is missing. Is he drunk? He searches for his usual anchors but comes up empty handed. Instead, dust carries the scent of his brother. He can't tell if the mass on the bottom of his stomach, somewhere beneath the yearning, is relief. Doesn't matter, it turns into panic anyway.

The bed is empty. Vergil is not in the bed. Dante's eyes fly open and repel the last tendrils of sleep.

Fortunately, his small heart attack is over soon: Vergil is no longer sitting next to him, but he's not gone. His calm, steady pulse taps against the edge of his mind like one of those Japanese bamboo fountains that are meant to scare off deer but are oddly relaxing to look at. Dante's stiffened spine melts on the bunk. Water trickles in; the piece of bamboo clacks against stone. Vergil breathes. Dante thanks god because there is no one else to listen.

He rolls into the middle of the crib and takes his sweet time to cool off. In a way, he's done mornings like this before, he contemplates while wrapping himself in the covers. He purposefully chose to get himself a mattress meant for two people so that it would have enough room for the ghost that never was and so that maybe, just maybe, he would not be reminded of sleeping next to and on top of someone else in a much narrower bed. Never very successful, worth a shot anyway. He's built all these little rituals in his weekdays, it's precious. Nap the day away and take a swig every time your body twitches to interrupt yet another nightmare. Pass out on the floor of your workplace for a couple of weeks on end because it's easier than going to sleep in your own bed and losing your dignity costs nothing. Crawl into it only once the exhaustion gets bad enough, spend most of the time in a state between being wide awake and hallucinating until finally crashing. Wake up from the dreams and memories alone, not remembering if you were less or more tired a few hours ago. Rinse and repeat for twenty years or so, see what remains.

Today, no nightmares. Vergil remains. Dante is… disturbed. Weirded out by the unfamiliar, the creature of habit he is. From the safety of his nest, he inspects his roommate, who in turn is huddled on a tiny armchair facing the wall. His knees are drawn up and he's holding Yamato over his legs like a barrier of sorts. The pose could be juvenile if he were anyone else; because he isn't, it isn't. There must be a word for it and how it makes Dante's arm hair stand anyway.

It's not that he's spilled the oil to injure him. He is as he was before Dante nodded off, daylight uncovers no new changes. Physically, he's in good condition, although thinner than some arbitrary inner sense tells Dante. He's comparing a living person to a picture he's dreamed up and stashed away in a locket somewhere, wondering why it doesn't correspond to reality, so figures. In any case, whatever fruits Sparda has been eating really perform miracles; and here he really tries to feel grateful to him even when has no idea if his remains had been intelligent enough to make choices knowingly, when he doesn't _understand_. He tries to see his face for what it is, hale and hearty and intact, not to trace it for the damages and think the cracks are still there lurking beneath his skin. Maybe it would work out if he didn't notice how the undersides of his eyes paint a twin of bruises on his complexion. Sickly. Strung out. It suits his features because to that extent, it matches the image Dante has of him: he never sees Vergil happy.

There's no chance he doesn't hear Dante trashing and rolling around the bed. Nothing indicates he's giving a damn about it. His eyes are lit. Not having a fit, then. There's a tiny window up on the wall he's facing, but he's not staring at it, more like resting his gaze. The openness, the glimpse of vulnerability Dante at least imagines he saw, is already gone with last night. Starting to regret pissing on the chance to make him talk about his motivations in three, two, one.

During the night, his distress has eaten up all the oxygen in the room. The air, no matter how chilly it is with Vergil's aura, is stuffy and the bedclothes are slightly damp. It's difficult to tell if the smell of his sweat is as horny and miserable as Dante thinks it is. But − no nightmares, no dreams at all. It is pretty weird. For having slept only a few hours, he's reasonably well-rested.

“Morning,” he breathes out, cringing at how huskily he says it.

No answer. Bummer.

He's being foolish. Past is past is past.

Because of Vergil's tendency to get up earlier than him regardless of the hour, as a kiddo Dante would usually begin his day by paying a visit to his room if he hadn't already crawled there during the night: otherwise, he could miss the window of running into him alone and having him and his good mornings all to himself − he could be in the kitchen, observing how Eva cooked breakfast if it was a good day and pouring her first drink of the morning if it was one of the worse ones, or in the library and asking her to get him a book he couldn't reach even with the ladders. She'd smile at Dante and make Vergil greet him if he was too immersed in whatever he was doing to tear his eyes away from it, but it would be impeccably polite and soulless. If it was just the two of them, Vergil might kick him out of the bed if he'd been hogging the covers again and say it with poorly concealed laughter coloring his tone, or he would mutter it into his hair, clinging to his back sleepily, and he'd be rude and sweet and _sincere_. For as long as Dante can remember, he'd held this notion of Vergil being first and foremost his by right, and as much as he had loved Mother (and he did, he doesn't always remember that), he did not want to share him, needed to be the sole focus of his attention. He's sure it would have been considered adorable back then − aww, look, they love each other so much! −, but he suspects he crossed a line and some moral horizon when he traipsed into the territory of wanting to rip the off the heads of those who dare to look at his brother wrong after first feeding them their own eyeballs and genitals too, probably. Dante isn't a noble man for being in love. 

That was then. What he has now has to suffice.

“'Good morning, brother dear',” he says from the depths of his toasty little cocoon, assuming a highly accurate imitation of Vergil's voice. To do so, he uses the advanced and sophisticated technology of speaking in his nose while gravelling lowly. Surprisingly difficult: how does he do it? “'I hope you slept well. Even someone as immensely powerful and handsome as you needs proper rest on the eve of a battle of epic proportions, lest they be underperforming. I see it has served you well. ' Why thank you, Vergil, indeed I have. How nice of you to notice.”

No, he's not biting. He considers bringing out his falsetto for a more theatric effect. Most likely more trouble than it's worth, though − he's not appreciated enough. He takes solace in being able to show off his Latin skills: qualis artifex pereo, he thinks pointedly, I'm dying as such an artist and that's what the universe will lose in me. Now would be a good time for Vergil to be the mind-reader he usually appears to be.

Yup, his brother sure brings out the best in him. There's a loudspeaker inside his head that tirelessly blares “notice me!” at every direction and it's creepy because it's both childish and sexually frustrated. At least it'll disappear for a bit when Vergil actually does pay him any mind, since that's generally a cue for him and his cowardly guts to skip town.

“Damn, the mattress doesn't look much but it wasn't half bad. It's almost like I'm a new person: I might even be able to stand on my own feet now. Wild. Hey, do you think there's a place where I could grab something to eat in this −“

“Are you ready to leave?” Vergil cuts into his speech, sounding as disinterested in the answer as he is in listening to Dante blabbering at him. In spite of fully anticipating the brusqueness, it stings to be reminded of how easily he is discarded; seems that it's the price Dante must pay for getting him to talk a little earlier. His newborn brother might have been riding the high of having an intact flesh prison for change and momentarily had too big a mouth, which could explain the uncharacteristic unreservedness, still is a term best used loosely with him, and this resulting tight-lipped sulking. One step of progress, two steps back. Then again, it's too weird to reckon he couldn't control his words even under duress, so nah. He should think of it this way: he's up to speed about everything he has to for the plan to work out and, because Vergil is generous like that, was even given some extra tidbits. From Vergil's perspective, what else there is for them to speak about?

Not like he's actually hungry. He may have been, at some point in the distant past, but a demon's body can resort to cannibalizing itself or whatever, so he's forgotten it just as quickly. Racking his memory for the last time he ate proper-ish food, he supposes it's kind of sad if he can't even recall the occasion. He stretches his shoulders and hears his joints pop. What a shame this doesn't appear to be the kind of hotel that serves breakfast that doesn't come in the form of nuts scoured from a vending machine. Sitting down to have a mostly non-liquid meal in some nigh-deserted greasy spoon and watching his twin squirm in veiled impatience could be a nice respite, almost a cute family activity. What's not cute is that it would be Dante stalling and stealing Vergil's precious time. Saying farewell to yet another hopeless dream with a sigh, he tries to gather enough will to move.

Focusing on his cadaver reveals that it hasn't been sleepwalking and removing the stains on its own. “No, there's some cleaning up to do first. It seems that I've managed to drench myself in, ah, your blood. Demons might be into that, so got to get rid of it before we run into them.”

This shirt has seen shit, he notes while flexing his arms. He rubs the fabric apologetically. The blotches running up to his elbows won't be leaving without the gentle kiss of a cleansing fire anymore, that much is clear. A good scrub might reduce the size of the target painted on their back, though: Dante is not the only demon who's woefully attracted to this sort of thing. Every hostile within a mile knows they're coming if he reeks as though he's been having a bath Erzsébet Báthory style, not to mention that he'll have a hard time not freaking Vergil out if he keeps sniffing his clothes the whole trip.

(A bad metaphor again, his subconsciousness states pleasantly. It's debatable if the flakes of blood sprinkled on his garb and the bedclothes and him is virginal − the Savior not working isn't conclusive evidence of anything. Dante does the mental equivalent of sticking out his tongue at his inner voice to try and avoid poking it at the mess on his physical self. You won't be getting closer than this, just do it like you want to, he's told by the voice. He's such a fucking creep, jeez.)

Vergil has done that himself, he notes. Washed his clothes. The legs of his pants are shredded to fringes, which neither decreases the kitschy vibe nor adds to it, but most of the stains are gone. Dante apparently had enough foresight to pull his sleeves back before skewering him, since they've only suffered slight discoloration. Vergil's clothes have clearly been scrubbed so that the worst has come off, yet they've darkened and a faint aroma of iron still surrounds his paleness.

(A distant memory sparks to life: _Vergil is washing Dante__'__s shirt in the kitchen sink after they've been fighting when they shouldn't__ have. The stool under his feet creaks when he shifts his weight to put his elbows into it; when Dante tries to be sneaky and get up on it himself, a foot pokes him in the ribs._

_“Stop it.” Vergil is acting less agitated than he'd think, even after his first trick of scrubbing the fabric with cold water failed. He smells of lemon and determination. When he's made up his mind like this, there's no stopping him. It's like a force of nature that's_ _really fussy about weird things._

_“This is my fault,” Dante whines. He's not a child, he's _responsible.

_“I am glad we agree,” Vergil notes calmly. There's a lot of hand dishwashing detergent in the basin; a cluster of bubbles clings to the fringe of his hair, shining in rainbow colors in the light._

_“Let me do it,” he pesters again. _

_He's entirely ignored even when he makes a grabby hands gesture at his brother._

_“Vergil, it's _my _shirt, let me do it myself,” he says._

_“No. Dante, you won't have the patience to be thorough and then Mother will blame us both when she gets home.”_

_Vergil swats the clump of soap hanging over his face away. “I am doing this so that you won't have to. Try to appreciate it.”)_

“Please do that, then.” His brother has perfected the skill of speaking without moving a muscle. What's past is past, Dante's not a child no matter how childish he gets and Vergil won't be holding his hand through anything. His mess, his fault, his responsibility.

“In a minute.” Nevertheless, he's reluctant to get up. The sight of his twin next to the bed pleases him, no lie. If he lay back and pulled the edge of the duvet up to his chin, he could fake a rerun of the halcyon years. Vergil in a bad mood was a regular occurrence back then as well, so it wouldn't ruin the illusion completely. He could take a piece of paper, draw him, teach himself his features.

Groaning in defeat, Dane throws the blanket aside. “Feel like having a chat about yesterday? The little episode with the not-quite-demonic-animals and such,” he asks faux-casually when his back makes a crick.

“No,” Vergil says. For a remarkably well-read person, he sure likes his monosyllabic expressions.

“Okay, I brought that upon myself. You never want to talk, yeah yeah, but now you've got to. This is a big thing, Vergil. Come on: how do you suppose I accompany you if I've no idea what causes it? Are you going to try and disembowel me once again at the drop of a hat, without any warning?”

“I am not forcing you to come with me. Go take your shower.”

Vergil is still not looking at him. He sounds bored.

Interestingly enough, the nap seems to have worked and restored the energy he lost during his voyage from Dumary Island to the underworld and back again; Dante feels sparks of anger ignite in his stomach and the fumes of it rising to his trachea. He'd like to deck him and kiss him hard enough to bruise his lips and he's not sure which order he'd prefer.

“That's unfair and you know it. I'll follow you anyway, but that's because I'm stupid and do stupid things like barging blindly into stuff I know jack shit about. Be reasonable.”

Vergil still doesn't turn his head. The line of his mouth tightens, just a tick.

“Unfair? Grow up.”

“Fuck you, Vergil, th−“

Vergil interrupts him again, talks over him with his disinterested tone. Still not fucking looking at him. “I cannot imagine what I could say that you would want to hear. That yes, you are in danger in my presence? That my body is not mine? You already know that, so what help could it possibly be, other than, perhaps, pleasing you? I cannot guarantee you anything_._”

Oh.

The scary thing about this little outburst is that it's not an outburst at all. Hearing something like this, you'd expect. Dunno. Bitterness. Hatred. Exhaustion, dejection, grudge, malice, something, anything, a feeling, any. It's not Vergil snapping at him because he is so utterly collected and his cold voice is so totally dead and clinical in its detachment. It's only words; all emotion has burned out and merely a hardened outer shell is left standing. If Dante could tap his fingers against the tone, it would ring.

Vergil gives him no to time to recover or try to digest the knife he's stuck in his windpipe.

“Dante. Take your shower.”

It's not a request.

Dante does what Dantes do. He finds himself an escape route.

“Fine, have it your way. I think I left my shoes in the other room, so I'll go get them, kill two birds with one stone and take my bath there,” he informs his companion. It's technically true. He's merely not saying he'll do it so that he can be alone for a second, maybe sort his head out for a minute, swallow his irritation, maybe even jerk off.

Predictably, Vergil doesn't answer. For all intents and purposes, he's exactly the same he was when Dante woke up, as if their heartwarming exchange never took place. He hasn't moved an inch and doesn't do so when Dante kicks the chunk of the door they cut out earlier and it smashes into the opposite wall with a loud thud, nearly knocking down a framed picture of a prosaic seascape. He's petty enough to consider bringing it down anyway.

The door to their first accommodations stands wide open and the flowerpot in the corner has been toppled over somehow. Otherwise, there's nothing to indicate anything went wrong some time ago at all. No blood trails, slashed wallpaper, scorch marks. Makes him all homesick for his office. Curiously, he's not even hit in the face by the smell of blood when he enters the room − instead, there's only a whiff of fire remains that humans probably couldn't detect. Could be that Vergil was here while he slept, ventilated the room. Makes sense he would have felt the need to get clean at some point and fiddling around Dante might have kept him awake, so why not make sure no discriminating evidence is left behind while there? Though Vergil is likely not bothered by criminal charges or compensation for damages and is interested in their body parts not getting into wrong hands. He's got the feeling their repertoire will include the hotel equivalent of dining and dashing before the day is over: while the actual signs of slaughter have been dealt with, explaining and compensating the fate of the bed and the lock to the personnel is going to be a lot of fun. Their best behavior is evidently not much.

Oh well. Not like he really gives a damn. Expressing moral outrage over antisocial behavior is something he does to occupy his mind with inconsequential bullshit. It's easier to handle any guilt caused by small things than the ones that matter. The formalities completed, he opens the bathroom door. And thus Dante is where was yesterday, even if he doesn't actually remember what the room looked like. Nothing to write home about but not the worst toilet he's had a breakdown in. Like said, progress for him is a step forward and two steps back at best. In truth, he hasn't improved at all: with his refreshed cells he is lugging around all the fears he had conjured up in his hysterics.

So, he's not becoming a better person, that much is clear. Can't get rid of the dirty thoughts if he tries, so why resist. If Vergil was here for a bath, he reflects, it means he stood in the same spot he's now occupying, naked. Maybe the tiles on the wall remember his figure, the mirror; but when he looks for him in them, he only finds his own panic reflected back at him. Yesterday wasn't good. He recalls the ribs pressing into him, the staccato of his breathing, bitten lips and sweat in his hair. It's getting impossible to say what is in and what is out of context.

He wasn't kidding about the jerking off. In a typical fashion, his brain refuses to work the way he expects. Given that this moment is the least inopportune time to get an erection he's had in forever, he's actually nowhere near as keyed-up as he has been, well, basically since he reunited with his sibling slash reluctant muse. The dread is getting pretty overwhelming, though, so he could do with relieving stress. Besides, he won't be having the chance to blow off steam in a long while, maybe never again if the plan goes south. Probably wouldn't miss it all that much: aside from the obvious physical effects that fade so quickly they do nothing to combat his unhappiness, he ends up feeling like shit anyway, mostly because of the guilt and upsetting reminiscence and more often than he'd like due to the property damaged involved. Dante just hasn't come up with another means of alleviating the tension − thus here he is.

Here he is.

It's been ages since he last did it.

Pulling off the clothes he might as well start to call his, he notes how red his hands are. When he licks his mouth in a weird attempt to get rid of the dryness in his throat, he discovers more blood. It's such a tiny fleck that he barely tastes the copper, sweet and saline; a phantom of a memory melts on his tongue and cloys his mind with the warmth of metal. He's already half-hard.

He doesn't want to be this.

He's too tired to fight it.

Fresh iron surrounds him when it streams down from the showerhead. On the underside of his skin, his flesh is heating up: the steam pierces his pores, almost boiling water lashing against his abdomen. He instantly thinks of Vergil. It's inevitable, no matter how much he tries to picture a foreign embrace or remind himself of the plastic paper girls lining the walls of his office, the ones he's reducing to a pair of tits and still fails to get off on. Allowing himself the indulgence will save time, never mind his childish notion that he'll run out of lust if he spends it recklessly.

Vergil, dressed in his old blue coat and vest but missing the scarf and the resentment. Donning his current vivid features and intent on hiding them, he presses Dante on his stomach and pins his arms behind his back with two rough tugs. It's mostly pointless: he's not putting up even the token fight, but he imagines he would like the way it forces Vergil to get closer and makes a pained shiver flash on his spine. His demanding weight on top of him lights a heat on his face; there's something intimate and intoxicating in his surrender even when his nude body is laid bare under him, as though his plain hunger makes him truly naked. Dante gives to be given, and to answer him Vergil lets him feel the hard curves of his body that's more filled out than it is in current reality, hot and solid through his pants. His grip on his wrists hurts. Dante pushes his ass up to meet him, he lets him slide against him, chafe his skin, he pushes back and lets his desperation beg him because his words can't.

Dante only stops moving when Vergil sneaks a hand between them. Leather creaks; Vergil opens his fly and places a firm palm on his lower back to keep him down, to keep his distance, to make Dante ache for contact. When he leans forward, careful not to let either his mouth or cock touch him, he is hot against his ear.

And then he'd say:

Yeah. What would he say?

“You mean less than nothing to me. Right now, you are just a warm body, nameless, insignificant − you could be anyone.”

“This is another weakness you cannot afford.”

“I am merely a figment of your imagination and even then, I am only touching you to show how far you are ready to go and how low you are willing to sink, no matter if I am unwilling. You want me to debase myself so that we are both stained by your greed. Does it please you, Dante? Does it make you feel powerful to take away my autonomy and make me atone for my sins, just like him? Oh, but did you not want to hear what he did to me, what I let him do to me, every sordid little detail? I will, of course, tell you if you make me − and if it is too much for you, you can always kill me.”

Dante stares at the tiles in front of him without really seeing anything. He feels every droplet of water on his skin like a paper cut. The dry heat of his cock throbbing inside his palm. He's surrounded by his breath that comes in short, disjointed gasps; it's silent inside his head, he's drowning in his lungs, the claustrophobia of it.

Let's switch tactics. If Vergil has his mouth full, he won't be able to speak his mind. Dante's thumb slides down on the foreskin to release the head; like a marionette, Vergil mirrors his moves, a vessel for his craving, sharp knuckles knocking and scraping against the floor with every movement of his hand underneath their bodies. The friction is punishing and he needs him to flip them, to get down on the floor and on him. But then his own breathing breaks the scene again with a vision of his brother on his knees to serve a different cause, blood-red pain shooting through his skull and Dante's lungs.

Does that please you?

_No_ − no. Another display. He's reclining on his back and opens his legs so that Vergil can slip between them. Vergil lies between his thighs and opens his hot throat for him. Like he's done this before, with someone else, in a real life, driven by desire he himself feels. The only facial expression Dante can paint on him is either total blankness or an accusing stare that really is all kinds of wrong with his dick deep in his mouth. Not that the emptiness isn't − it's probably worse, it's his brother lying back and thinking of England as he bobs his head lower and lower, slick, merciless, swallowing around him wetly, clamping his muscles to draw a tight groan from him. His imagination rebels against his feverish commands and has him emotionless and hollowing his cheeks around his girth while looking him in the eye. His mouth is stretched and obscene and unfeeling and he hates it, twitches and bucks his hips. By this point he's beginning to wonder if this ends with Vergil biting the organ off, if he would come that image. (Vergil chokes and swallows. He would, he _would_.) In his haze, he can only think of one middle ground. He makes Vergil close his eyes. Allows him to think about whatever, whoever he wants.

He probably could hear his pulse from here if he wanted to, Dante thinks with sudden clarity. Vergil, on the other side of the wall. He'd know if he tried, he's pretty sure of that: the connection goes both ways, a two-way street. Vergil, on the other side of the wall. If he did − if he heard − if he saw what a wreck he truly is, he'd never forgive himself. He'd never look at Dante again because this is what he would face every time. Caught with his pants down, letting out a broken sound as he pumps his hand faster. He's sorry, he needs, he's, he's sorry, his own tongue is suffocating him. He's not here, but he is on Dante's skin. His scent, his nicotine, has mellowed when it's been mixed with his and the stream of water washes it away hungrily; maybe it rains in his little fantasy, maybe he's crying in it. His fingers fumble and he watches how they tremble against Vergil's swollen lip in reverence. Trying to shield his eyes from the downpour, he leans against the wall and swipes his hair back with a shaky hand, the left one, skin drawn tight and sensitive around the scarring, without realizing he's doing it until he's coming. The intimacy shatters in a gunshot and it's alright, he doesn't need it, won't ever get it, won't call it his.

His head is heavy against the tiles and his hair drags him down, making him fight to keep his balance. Inhale, inhale, inhale; the rushing in his ears gets louder, his respiration less so. His unsteady knees are the only part of him that doesn't weigh a ton, his wrist is cramping, he's sore all over.

Does he feel better now?

The tremors in his hands subside slowly. Dante empties each and every bottle he can fleece on himself to drown his body and mortified embarrassment in shower gel, lotion and shaving foam. Ranking up the heat in vain and using some of the suds to rinse the sleeves of his shirt, he suspects that his skin still reeks of sex underneath the aggressively floral notes. Being told to stop being such a wanker is among the nicest comments he could receive right now, sure, but Vergil doesn't deserve this, him rubbing his degeneracy in his, uhm, nose.

His picture in the foggy mirror is unchanged when he dresses and hopes the fabric dries soon. The beginnings of a stubble on a pink-flushed jaw and a hairdo that's beyond redemption tell him it could be him − otherwise, there's some detachment he doesn't care to try and unravel. He has a portrait of Dorian Gray of his own, but instead of dumping all the ugly thoughts and desires on an easel to keep the youthful looks, something in him turns the degradation inwards and makes him rot from the inside.

Speaking of poisoning his insides. This fine establishment is a hotel, isn't it? The odds are the room's equipped with a minibar. Dante bids his fondest goodbyes to the bathroom and heads out.

His hunch is accurate: there's a box sitting on the floor next to the place where the bed would be if it had survived them. To his knowledge, Sparda didn't drink but he didn't give a shit about human vices either, so it's up to a coin toss if Fortuna's crazy religion permits boozing. For once, the luck is on his side. He leaves the soft drinks in the forefront be and makes a beeline for the good stuff. Among the two tiny bags of chips, there's a beer that has crossed its expiration date many moons ago, some regular spirits in a disappointingly small bottle and a flask some previous guest has clearly forgotten in the fridge. The room service won't be getting very praising ratings from him.

It seems prudent to have a snack first, so he tears through the plastic packages and marvels at how the taste is only slightly funky in spite of the potatoes having lost their crunchiness. His lucky streak continues: while the beer can makes interesting noises as he pries it open, it doesn't explode all over him like it's developed a life of its own while getting spoiled. Chugging the lager down, he takes an experimental sniff at the mystery beverage. Boozy, a bit fruity under the stench of alcohol and tobacco. Brandy of some sort. Eva wore this like a perfume in her bad moments and weeks when she was there physically but her eyes were hollow and withdrawn.

It's not some nice cask-strength or quadrupled whisky he'd prefer to abuse if he had the money, but it sure is fancier than what he can usually spring for, the various denatured surrogate alcohols et cetera. He makes a mental salute to her while drinking; this probably isn't what she wanted him to inherit, but what about him is? Dissolving emotions in alcohol is a family tradition at this point. And yeah, this isn't a thing he should be pondering when he's thought of his sibling in self-gratification so recently. Leaves a bad taste in his mouth, really. The vodka he inhales as a digestive fails to neutralize the bite, so the brandy haunts his palate for a while.

She lost a lover. She had the right to grieve like a widow. Dante is too old to play house with imaginary has-beens.

Only soda left. It was fun while it lasted, he supposes and gets up. Now that he's started, the psychological impulse to hit the bottle has gotten louder − it has gone nowhere in the meanwhile even when he'll never bodily show any withdrawal symptoms or other signs of addiction. A hard reset to zero. Tempting. He could keep going, raid the next room and the entire floor. This didn't get him any drunker than gargling mouthwash would, but he could get there, it's what he does when things like this happen to him; he pours Lady a drink at the ruins of Temen-ni-gru and the sun sets and rises before them, she gets him plastered post Mallet and his habit keeps him alive. But Lady isn't here now and technically, Vergil isn't yet lost. If he's lost her and she won't be toasting with him when Vergil disappears, it's, well, a matter for another time.

This stalling has left him uncertain. This getting back to where they started thing − is it him forcing himself upon Vergil? Sure, he did repeatedly claim the decision to go was up to Dante. He's also aware Dante's got nowhere to go and nobody to be, so why would he ever say no to him? Maybe he should nevertheless have had the sense to decline outright. Why would Vergil have stayed then, though? Not to mention that he's not shy about saying no and brushing Dante off; his brother isn't exactly a shrinking violet, is he? A somewhat rested Dante is an advantage and he likes having those. Yeah, it could be that simple. Vergil could actually want him around, not because of what he represents as a person but because of him being another layer of bricks on his line of defense, a meat-shield. He's wanted because he has instrumental value as a weapon, that being the one thing he's good for. This should not make him uncomfortable. Also, there could always be the aspect of human(ish) sacrifice too − should never rule that out with Vergil.

(_My body is not mine_. How much of Vergil's mind is his own?)

Okay. He's thinking about action now, not moping. Action is good. He's blowing everything out of proportion, it helps no one. Action. He'll get to punch some demons in the face and stop worrying himself to death about Vergil maybe-probably dying. Dante slams the door to 412 closed with confidence he hopes he'll feel one day. Then he reopens it and gets the shoes he was supposed to pick up in the first place. Christ.

Face the wall, face the music. He forgot to close the door to their newer room so he misses the chance of taking a deep breath behind it before stepping in. Turns out he might as well have taken it: Vergil's still facing the wall when he slinks back into his presence with his tail between his legs. To distract himself from the unfortunate connotations of that wording, he resorts to inane chatter again because it's served him so well in the past.

“How long was I asleep? I've lost the track completely. Feels like months, but you wouldn't be waiting for little old me if I pulled a Sleeping Beauty.”

No movements in the corner. Quelle surprise.

“Hey, jackass, I'm making small talk here. I know you can hear me. Can't you ever just play along, ever for a sec?”

“It is virtually a rhetorical question. I see no point in answering,”

“Is not. You can't know that.”

“You are merely making noise. You do not care. Are you finally done?”

It's highly tempting to make a comment on things having crawled up Vergil's ass while he was away, but it somehow doesn't feel right to go there when he was rutting against it in his imagination a couple of minutes prior. Okay, not literally his ass, but the idea is there.

“Sure,” Dante grunts. Vergil doesn't bother to acknowledge the admission with words, just swings his legs to the ground and gets up. He's out of place in a place like this with his ruler-straight back and he seems to be all too aware of it, nearly uncomfortable. It occurs to Dante he's maybe being harsh on him; it must be difficult to interact with reality after such a long time, after losing his mind to someone else. Trauma has a way of making life awkward.

Vergil walks to the door without pursuing any eye contact. Dante steps to the side and lets him proceed to the doorway.

“Wait a minute; don't know what you've planned here, but could we go through the lobby? I'll feel better about the collateral damage if we pay for it,” he says.

Vergil's back listens listlessly. “As you wish.”

With a click of his fingers, the bed is flushed with familiar flames. It's the end of a chapter: when Dante, taking a moment to look for ashes that never appear on the carpet, reaches him, he is already climbing down the stairs.

The lobby is empty. No clients, no staff, no police patrol to arrest them for whatever it is that humans would think they were doing, first-degree murder, garish sodomy, whatever − well, these nutzos have armed forces instead of police. Be as it may, they must have their hands full with the fallout of the demon business.

Dante strolls to the desk and looks around. When no clerks materialize in front of him, he gets up to his toes and has a peek over the counter. No, no one hiding under it. When another look around the hall reveals nothing new, he concludes his search and dusts his hands mentally. “There isn't anyone around here. Their loss; let's go.”

“Are you not going to ring the bell?” Vergil asks him with an intonation that's not intended to be used in questions.

“Nah, this is where my sense of duty ends. They're not here, they don't want my money.”

“Which you do not have.”

“Not important. It's the principle of the thing, you wouldn't understand. So, we leaving?” Yeah, he didn't really think this through. There's a high possibility of Vergil having more dough on him, but this is Dante's meaningless penance, not his. At the bottom of his pocket, the coin Lady bestowed upon him so graciously reminds him of its existence. He's not looking to insult the people with fake money, though.

He gets a nod. Then Vergil closes his eyes, an uncomfortable memento of his shower, draws Yamato out of her sheath and calmly measures the air around him with four composed swings. There's something almost therapeutic in watching his movements. He repeats them swiftly and a dash of ozone bleeds out like sap.

Today's portal is vaguely diamond shaped and is carved so high that it has a threshold. “I cannot take us straight to our destination since he has certain precautions in place, but there are other ways of traveling,” Vergil say and puts his blade away.

“With Yamato, we can get to the river. Once we have crossed it, we can proceed by foot. It should not take long, so be prepared.”

“The river?”

Vergil's lips quirk.

“The Styx.”

\--

Ex nihilo nihil fit.

On the other side, there is a void. Vergil appears soon after him and dispels the gate by baring a sliver of Yamato and encasing in again it with a click, but during the heartbeat it takes, Dante fears something's gone horribly wrong. He gave up trying to predict their route well before they started the trip, but he guesses he nevertheless had the implicit expectation of portal-hopping to _somewhere_. If he thought Argosax's place was vacant and unnerving, he'd seen nothing, because now that's precisely what's there to see and sense.

Nothing.

He's not exaggerating a bit. Literally, it's a void. Blank in every way. Gazing the non-landscape straight ahead of them is a disturbing experience because it's like being blind and simultaneously seeing everything in excruciatingly high detail. His eyes hurt. He misses sand and birches.

Making a 180-degree turn reveals more nothingness. It's rather freaky: he's standing on his feet stably and apparently can walk forward and back like it's nothing (ha ha ha), but there doesn't seem to be any kind of ground under them, nothing to stop the tip of his shoe when he pokes it downwards. His other sole rests on the same level as before and bears his weight while the other foot sinks through thin air. He pulls it back up and voila, he's back to standing where he was. If mister Spoilsport weren't here, he might run a test and jump.

Fuck it, he'll do it anyway.

He lands back on the same level again without still feeling anything under his feet, zero impact. Gravity − check, probably. He's not floating around as a balloon, so it seems likely. Oxygen too, and light of some sort; he can't figure out where it's glowing from and how bright it is to be exact, where are all the shadows? His head spins when he tries to take in the nonexistent surroundings; no horizon, no distinctive color or shape or texture to the space, no depth or width.

Well, this is weird. Almost as strange as the fact his companion isn't making any annoyed Vergil noises at his antics. His brother hangs in the back with crossed arms, as casual as your given human being would be in the neighborhood mall or walking past some boring tourist attraction he sees every day on his way to work. Figures he'd be more at ease here than in a hotel room and close quarters to Dante.

Evidently, all is going according to plan. On that account, he has a request to make. “Before I forget: please tell me beforehand when you're planning to chop off any limbs this time. Really. I hate being surprised when I've been told to be on my toes.”

“As you wish,” Vergil echoes his earlier words. “Are you done with your explorations; may we proceed now?”

“Sure, whatever. This is the limbo, though. How do we get to point B, whatever that is?” Pinpointing why he's certain is as impossible as it was on his last stay. Clearly, it's not where the king of Hell is hiding, thus it's all the same to him in any event. Great, because it'd be too distracting a scene for a battle − it would be nicer to have a regular haunted castle or even a pit of eternal ice à la Dante Alighieri, three-headed Mundus flapping his wings and chewing on some poor unfortunate traitors in the middle of the glacier. This total lack of distractions will drive him crazy way too soon. Then he'll drive Vergil out of his mind by pestering him and they're both entirely fucked.

“By foot. ibimus, ibimus,” Vergil says and heads confidently to the right.

“Hey, I know that word,” Dante exclaims while trying to catch up with him. “It's a verb, yes? 'To go'?”

“Correct.” Vergil makes a vaguely smile-like expression Dante most likely isn't meant to see. He does because he darts past him, misjudging his speed under such strange conditions. Nerd. “Latin has its uses. If you remember your _Aeneis_, you will find it quite accurate in many respects. quod si tantus amor menti, si tanta cupidest, bis Stygios innare lacus...”

“Okay, that's many words. Why don't we quit while we're ahead?”

“Hmm,” Vergil says, leaves it at that.

They walk quietly until Dante's pretty sure the scene won't be changing in the immediate future.

“Correct me if I'm wrong − should remember who I'm talking to, of course you will −, but isn't there supposed to be, I don't know, all kinds of monsters here if the book is telling the truth? Or those wreaths, the shadows of suicidal queens wandering about and whatnot? Fields of Elysion? Ivory gates?”

Vergil takes his time. His silence is contemplative; Dante tries to quell his ADHD and wait. He's getting a migraine already.

“According to Vergilius, each of us has a Hell of our own. True enough; as said, the netherworld is vast, and in some areas of this realm, you see what you are allowed to see. Reality is more malleable here than in the human lands, and some demons thrive when they can bend it as they see fit.” It goes without saying that the demon they're seeking fits to that category. Dante's witnessed first-hand what Mundus can do with a bit of demonic energy in the human world and the dimension where they had their showdown and it isn't pretty, no insult to Trish (and Mom) intended. Doesn't bode well for them if the corner of the world is on his side by default. Vergil's being so vague about it means there's not much else for him to do than take it at face value and let a disjointed, disembodied worry gnaw his bones, though. Typical.

“Personalized inferno, you say. What do you see now, then?” Dante asks, picking up a footnote instead. It occurs to him he's expressed more general curiosity in the span of a couple of days than in decades, probably to Vergil's great annoyance.

“The road.”

“Figuratively?”

“Yes.”

Dante resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Okay, but if we're talking literally.”

Vergil all but shrugs. “Emptiness.”

“Nothing else, anything at all?”

“No. This is the limbo,” Vergil says flatly, like it explains anything.

“Seems that we share the same purgatory, then.”

“Hnn,” Vergil remarks.

Yep. This isn't the brother who eagerly took every chance he got to bask in his besserwisserism and try to force any information through Dante's thick skull. Since the replies have become so short again, he gives up hope of having another educational conversation for a while.

Some time passes and most of the novelty of their surroundings wears out. Trying to maintain high levels of alertness turns out to be more trouble than it's worth; Dante takes to listening to how their breathing synchronizes and gets lost in the ebb and flow of the quiet, lapsing into a hibernation mode he finds comfier than he ought to. When Vergil finally makes a low throaty sound that tells him to look alive, they could have been walking for a few hours or days.

And for what? It's a rock. There is a pedestal of sorts in front of them; high enough to reach a man's chest, made of some nondescript gray stone, unadorned, rectangular and regular in shape. The top of it is a little slanted, though not enough that things placed on it would fall off. His twin darts to it and swipes his palm on the surface to inspect it.

Making war against Mundus isn't as exciting as anticipated. Dante stays back and lets Vergil take the floor, wondering why he was not-exactly-asked-but-close-enough to tag along. He regrets it when his brother whips out Yamato and slices the tip of his index finger off in a single instant.

The blood is an old hat by now, relatively. Being constantly surrounded by it, being in his presence and sensing it soaring in his veins builds up a tolerance. That's not to say it doesn't still kick him in the nuts, but he'll deal. It's a matter of principle, mostly, or of trust. Can't order him not to do it because he holds no power over him, can't really ask him no to do it because it's useless, he won't listen; but a simple warning is not too much, is it?

Dante gathers himself to note the injury not that serious. Their bodies can take lots of punishment, probably far more so here where they're clearly in sync with demoness and whatever; here, his trigger is always hanging on the background of his mind as a palpable reminder, as physical as Rebellion is in the peculiar way it weighs on him when it's not summoned. The current area has a different aura attached to it than the magical healing forests of Argosax, true. Being too much of a layman to point out why, he has to settle for merely making the observation. But yeah, they'll heal; while it's not going to be as fast here, as long they only receive damage like a sword blow through the body or the parts that get the chop are relatively small and simple, it should work out − and Dante would go as far as to claim that any severed parts would reattach themselves with a reasonably high probability if they just, you know, held them in place for that or so. There's got to be a limit to these things, however. Should someone decide to hack off another limb and burn it _again_, the idiot in question wouldn't soon be sprouting another hand like a lizard. Seems like a thing Vergil would know the exact limits of.

Still. He's not enjoying this.

“Vergil,” Dante says in a voice that's pinched even to his own ears, “remind me. What did I ask you when we got here, the thing you said yes to?”

Facing the altar, Vergil inclines the back of his head at him. He presses the finger against the stone and starts to run it on the surface from right to left, forming lines that turn into characters.

He's writing.

“I am not truly cutting anything off,” he says and sound very close to being innocently surprised. What a fucking prick. Seems that they both have some growing up to do if he's never abandoned this sort of rules-lawyering − come on, he knew exactly what Dante was going for and nevertheless knowingly made the asshole choice. Just _has to_ have the upper hand always, in everything, against anyone and even to his own detriment. Complaining won't be any use at this stage, so Dante buries his disappointment (hurt) and seethes in silence. See if he asks anything ever again. Vergil keeps drawing and disregarding any daggers thrown at him.

The tissue knits back together swiftly enough that Vergil has to reopen the wound after a couple of words. It takes him three cuts to complete a line; he hums in frustration, makes his next slash dip lower, bone scraping loudly against the surface as he sets out to paint another row of characters. The constellation looks unfamiliar, but at least his hasty script hasn't changed from childhood. For Dante, writing has always demanded a lot of focus and as a result, his penmanship is pretty decent. Compared to his neat cursive, what Vergil's producing is honestly chicken scratch, bold letters that slope the more the closer he's to the end of a line. He gets the feeling Vergil scrawls so hastily because it's the only way to capture the thoughts running away from him million miles an hour. Not a problem he's ever had for sure.

Against his better judgement, Dante takes a closer look over his shoulder. Those are definitely A's and I's he's jotting down.

“That looks an awful lot like Greek to me,” he points out, deciding not to comment on the unusual direction of writing. He won't poke fun at the messiness of his scribbling either because he's too pissed off to make light, just basks in his confident belief that he'd do better, were he to pen something with a stump.

“Hush,” Vergil shushes him. Another verse is brought to an end; the previous ones dry out and darken into a mahogany shade as he works, careful not to smudge the fresher spots. By the time he lifts his finger for the last time and sets the hand holding his katana down, Dante has entered a light hypnotized state; Vergil draws back from the canvas as if admiring his handiwork and makes him jerk back in surprise.

“You were saying?”

“So, Greek? Some dialect I don't recognize,” Dante coughs, trying to find his voice and safe conversation topics.

“No, but I can see why you are mistaking it for that. It is Latin, merely of very arcane variety.”

“Huh,” Dante says. No words jump at him even with this knowledge. It's worth noting that nothing seems to be going on with the text (yet) − it sits there and looks ominous in a mostly non-supernatural way. “What's it say?”

Vergil makes a lazy spin to his direction, still the picture of nonchalant boredom. “I am afraid I cannot tell you. The words become meaningless if I read them out loud.”

“What a shocker. Never mind the bollocks then; is there a purpose to this exercise?”

“Naturally.” This is a good point for him to stop talking. Maybe he sees Dante's frown − he doesn't. “In Hell, doors tend to be locked. What opens them for pious Aeneas is the gilded branch. It is all metaphorical, of course; this is the closest I can get to gold.”

Before Dante has the time to come up with any additional questions (why an ancient book would be relevant to the real-life netherworld in the first place?), Vergil beckons him closer to the stone with a shrug and a tilt of his head. Although idle, Yamato is still drawn. It doesn't take a genius to figure out the next step.

“Worry not, I will be gentle,” he says. Someone who doesn't know better might call it purring. Explaining how the reassurance is kind of undermined by him being armed seems moot − especially when it would be lying and he's being way too transparent again. The absurdly lethal weapon is what makes this relatively safe, Vergil's out for blood only in the literal sense.

Dante is careful to give him his right hand.

This time, Vergil's touch is feather-light and pleasant when it cradles his palm and secures a grip on his wrist. This close, it is almost as if the flow of his veins could become reversed and become one with Dante's. They stand out from where they bloom into the blue vines on white, so visible that they seem tensed and pulled taunt like a violin string. Guided by the urge to destroy everything around him, Dante wants to tap them to see if he could make them either snap or sing. Skin contact and their body temperatures clashing into each other has rendered him spellbound, though. As Vergil veils himself with his lashes, Dante drops his gaze to their hands and relaxes.

“Are you suddenly not interested in whether or not I will 'chop off ' anything?” he's asked when his hand is positioned above the shrine.

Not when it's me.

Too much honesty.

“I'm assuming you're a man of your word even if your interpretation of a chop doesn't align with mine. You'd say if you were about to do an amputation on me. I guess.”

“Would I?” Vergil wonders airily.

“See, that's a hallmark rhetorical question right there,” Dante points out.

“Is it?” the same tone answers him.

Steel grazes him briefly. Cold; but there's a fleeting sense of warmth in Yamato's greeting. She is sharp enough that the pinprick of pain only comes once the cut has already healed over. He doesn't take a lot: Dante gets to keep his fingertip in one piece, it's nicked so that a small swarm of droplets spatters on the stone. Makes him feel all funny, seeing it mix with Vergil's. Dante used to think the consanguinity would be enough, that there'd be no need for blood oaths between them. Then Vergil pretended to die until it eventually stuck. In the past, there have been times when he's wondered if it would've made a difference, a bond even his brother would've hesitated to sever. In the present moment − well, Vergil said it himself. There are no guarantees. He'll make no promises.

Vergil lets him go a breath later. Dante lets go of yet another childhood truism. You see, while human twins may share most everything down to dressing styles and genes, they leave behind different imprints when they push their hands against frosted glass windows or color the living room with finger paint. The Sparda litter is too special to play by the common rules and thus even their fingerprints were twins to each other; Dante spent ages to confirm this, comparing every tiny swirl, whorl and arch until his crossed eyes couldn't make out the difference between a digit and a paintbrush. It's such an obvious thing to him that he hasn't been thinking about it at all, hasn't noticed.

When they guide Yamato back into her scabbard, the pads of Vergil's fingers are marble-smooth. Their blood may well be the last thing to connect them to one another.

“What does this signify, then?” Dante asks without expecting an answer.

“A wing and a prayer,” Vergil snorts.

As they speak, Vergil's words become liquid again. A drop of blood gathers to the bottom of every mark and grows until the weight makes it break the tension and bleed out like a tear; a drop turns into two, becomes a cascade. The combined volume of their blood trickles down on the monolith slowly but surely. When it reaches the edge and goes over it, the droplets that now race towards the ground have assumed a crystal-clear color. Vergil observes the sight until every ounce of red has turned transparent, the message has melted and disappeared into water, then makes the smallest of nods and walks past the block. Dante rubs his lonely hands together and follows him deeper into the abyss.

\--

Hell is empty and some demons are there, traversing it briskly and regretting their life choices.

To be fair, there's a small shift in the scenery. Now, Dante's gut and old bones scream at him that this is the real deal again, but you wouldn't be able to tell the actual Hades and the interregnum apart purely by the visuals. The space around them still seems to expand endlessly into any given direction; it's white on white on white, no ground or ceiling, but at least the… whiteness is undeniable. It gets even better and more tangible: around them, thin but opaque mist is swirling in plumes of white smoke, which maybe, hopefully, explains why there's the sense of something constantly flickering in the corners of his eyes.

Why oh why can't he simply get a foe he could sink his broadsword into?

No such luck.

There is white steam. They walk.

They've been at it… quite some time. Long enough that he's managed to become both worried and then unconcerned again.

What area is this?

Where are all the (other) devils?

When will they get to Mundus?

When they do, will Dante still remember what they are trying to accomplish here?

Will there be food?

“Shit, this place is confusing. You can tell me if we're lost, I won't ridicule you. Much,” he tells Vergil, surprised that his voice is as bright as it is after all the non-use. He has been quite resourceful so far, which means there's no real reason to distrust him, which means he's bothering him because he wants to have company, sue him.

Vergil doesn't get this. He bristles at the comment, visibly insulted. “I am perfectly aware of where we are.”

“But do you know where we're going? You know, the right direction. I can tell by experience it's possible to know your location but not the way forward.”

“_Yes_,” Vergil hisses. “Stop it. You are making it harder for me to concentrate.”

“On what?”

“On keeping us as safe as I can,” Vergil says between his teeth, like he can't help answering but can't bring himself to be helpful or polite either. Now that Dante sneaks a glance at him, his forehead is creased and his brows are slightly furrowed in effort.

“Wh−“

“Dante. Trust me. There are things you do not want to see any more than I do, so be quiet and let me focus.”

The smoke is very white and plentiful.

\---

“Here we are.”

Vergil's deadpan observation turns Dante's agonized lethargy into a relieved sigh. Finally.

“I'm still not seeing shit,” Dante claims, pushing forward into the clouds in front of them. Behind them, there is more of the same. He's getting real tired of this; he picks up his pace, there's got to be something, he wants a scenery, any scene.

Suddenly, he has to pull himself to a halt. Where there was nothing just a moment ago, shrouded in the ever-so-persistent fog, he indeed gets a view. Vergil's hand on his elbow comes a second later, as if he was stunned by the surprise of Dante doing something idiotic like diving blindly into the unknown, but that's simply not possible.

They're standing on the shore of a lake, barely a stride away from the proverbial waves. It's certainly bigger than the other bodies of water he's literally stumbled into in this realm. The mist makes it hard to determine just how far it expands, but when he stands on the bank, he gets the same feeling he does when at seashore: the waters are deep and vast, both a heavy mass and a gaping space of emptiness spreading out in front of him. A faint sense of vertigo, a siren calling him from the depths. What's missing is the salty breeze; putrid wetland air stands still and tranquilizes the surface.

“This a river?” he mirrors his earlier words. This looks nothing like the stream Vergil dyed with his blood.

Vergil releases his arm and steps alongside him. Leaning on Yamato with a serene halo, he looks around and answers. “The word Vergilius occasionally uses for the Styx is 'palus', a mire lake. Some poetical license has been granted. Mind your steps.”

“So the fabled Styx is a bog,” Dante states. The fairytales just aren't what they've made out to be.

Vergil glances at him.

“In essence. Do you remember the significance it has been given in myths?”

“Wait, I got this. The Acheron is the river of pain and the Lethe − don't look at me like that, I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce it − is that of forgetting. Then there's… one that's on fire forever and ever, yeah?”

“The Phlegethon.”

“Right. There's one for sadness too, the name escapes me.”

“The Cocytos. In _Divina Commedia_, it is in the ninth circle of Hell, the lowest one, and _Aeneis _describes it as the basins of the Styx. Together, they are what ancient gods swear by,” his guide lectures him.

“Hmm, forgot about that. Maybe I should consider changing Dante into something else, stop shaming my namesakes and ancestors. Hey, the Styx is the river of hatred, yes?”

“That's right,” Vergil confirms. Dante expects him to elaborate − it was him who brought the topic up, after all. The silence stretches and becomes tense. When he risks a side-eyed peep, Vergil's face is indifferent. He comes close to asking why all that was relevant to anything at all, but instead he watches how Vergil gets to one knee and starts an intensive staring compensation with the quagmire.

Upon a closer inspection, a colorful mantle of plants has set upon the slough. Reedy grasses, moss, reeds, even stuff that's probably carnivorous. Dante squints. No lake could sustain this amount of flora eating up all the oxygen back on earth. Perhaps these weeds are related to the birches growing in Argosax's domain, he wonders when it clicks. Oh. Took him surprisingly long.

There are plenty of marsh plants on top of the moss, alright. Only it seems that it's not actual foliage he's seeing but mold and layers upon layers of dead vegetation: some of it in the usual shades of gray and green, decay's familiar attire, other parts in bright oranges, vibrant blues and crimson. Against the leaden backdrop of the swamp water, it's a lively sea of color, and yet there is nothing in the lake that's alive, an entirely still life of death frozen in place or, fittingly, a literal garden of death. The stalks and spines of the flowers sprout towards what would be the sky, fragile, like a technicolor of spiderweb, no wind to disturb the peace of the graveyard.

Out of nowhere, something breaks it from beneath. The swamp ripples with a movement on the spot Vergil's attention is fixed at, foreboding an appearance. Sure enough, a rectangular object floats up to the surface with a final surge that floods the surrounding calm until placid glass overcomes it.

The mysterious newcomer turns out to be a small wooden raft. Looks very old; the wet logs used to build it seem dense and all rotted out inside, barely strong enough to cling to each other.

“Don't tell me this piece of crap is our ticket to ride.”

Vergil somehow procures a long staff from the bed of reeds at his feet. Dante misses how he starts the process of pulling it out from the mud and catches on only when he's almost done; he tugs and the stick comes off, its metal-topped head covered in humus. Ah, it's a pike pole. “If we take Vergilius' advice to heart, only those who have been buried can cross the waters. 'It is forbidden to carry living bodies in the keel of the Styx', as the exact words of the Stygian boatsman would have it.”

“I assume that's not total bullshit, no matter how sketchy it sounds to me. I also don't believe we came all this way just to kill ourselves because of a swamp, so please share your ideas with the class.”

“Well. We take the ferry, simple as that. I have been dead before, in a way. Furthermore, I suspect the burial I gave to my arm will suffice.” Good to know Vergil's talent for showing total lack of fucks about his own demise in still unparalleled.

“You sure about that?” Dante asks, as if he has a choice or even cares. Vergil being so chatty in the underworld − it's a relative thing, talkative for him looks different than it does for Dante − doesn't help to convince him this isn't some type of changeling that is way too excited about getting back home.

“Only one way to find out,” he says idly. Dante's eye twitches. Vergil uses the stick to draw the pile of rotten planks closer to the bank; the thing groans and bows a tick lower but refuses to sink when it's stepped on. He could have easily made the jump, but for some reason doesn't try. Probably a smart idea. The ferry-boat doesn't inspire much confidence in its ability to buoy.

Turning around and making room by positioning himself on the very edge of the raft that's _maybe_ just wide enough for two grown men, Vergil keeps his tone light. “If it makes you feel better, you can always imitate ancient burial rituals and place your lucky coin in your mouth as a viaticum for the boat fare.”

Every instinct Dante has should be afraid of this borderline cheery Vergil. Nothing ever happens without a reason with him, nothing is born from a vacuum. He should, he knows, the thought tugs at his heartstrings. It always gets sidelined by other aspects of his person, but really, in the end his brother is endlessly curious, an adventurer.

“So you're the ferryman now?” he says, no letting the wordlessness win.

“As you can see, Charon is absent, so we have to make do.” Dante can't tell if he's joking.

Never mind, he's clearly serious about the boat ride itself. As blasé as his poker face always is, it's apparent that the undercurrent of humor dancing in his previous words has washed away and given way for a heavier emotion. Vergil watches him, seemingly equally as aware of the rift the lake forms between them as Dante is. Just a step and they're on the same side. Easy, isn't it. They must share this stupid sentimentality; the knowledge that they can maybe trust each other with this, but anything beyond simple fighting is plunging headfirst into the murky water of time wallowing in between. The difference is that Dante will trust him even when he's unsure if he wants to do so. Vergil, on the flip side, has a choice, could get through to him but won't, decides to take away all his lamps and leave him in the dark because he knows Dante will chase after him regardless. Nothing ever changes.

Vergil extends his hand, still carrying the shadow of a scar, towards Dante.

“Shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Hell! (Why do I get the feeling I've said that before?) 
> 
> The first quote of today is Horace 2,17 (The poem was previously used, iirc, in chapter 14 already. We will get back to it.):
> 
> “-- ibimus, ibimus,  
utcumque praecedes, supremum  
carpere iter comites parati.”
> 
> “we shall go, we shall go,  
whenever you'll take the lead,  
we are ready to seize the final journey together. " 
> 
> The longer line is from The Aeneid by Vergilius, book six. Here's the entire sentence:
> 
> “quod si tantus amor menti, si tanta cupido est  
bis Stygios innare lacus, bis nigra videre  
Tartara, et insano iuvat indulgere labori,  
accipe quae peragenda prius. --"
> 
> (Note: the first line is read “cupidest” because of reasons. The same goes for "Tartaret".)
> 
> “But if there is such love in (your) mind (meaning: in heart), if there is such a desire  
to twice swim in the Stygian lakes, to twice see the black Tartarus,  
and if it pleases you to indulge in such a senseless undertaking,  
accept what has to be done first.”
> 
> To give you an idea of what Vergil's writing looks like, see this pic on Wikipedia (too lazy to make embedding work, check the url). It's the inscription on the Praeneste fibula; the Latin is indeed very ancient. For some reason, I honestly don't see Vergil's writing being that much better.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praeneste_fibula#/media/File:Fibula_Praenestina.svg
> 
> Chapter 18: a romantic boat ride, of course <3 (drama guaranteed)


	18. xviii. Aims Above Your Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the quick update I hoped it would be (it may have been two chapters originally). I just can't have nice things like an actual schedule.
> 
> Question: will this be done in 20 chapters?  
Answer: hahaha, no.
> 
> Part 18: Dante should have that ADHD looked at. Also, sailing. Welcome aboard!

Dante trusts Vergil.

No, really. In plenty of ways, too; in fact, he could make a list. It's what he does when he's crammed his bones into the small space reserved for him on the dinghy, when Vergil's trusted him to follow his lead but not enough to strike up a conversation about anything, least of all to offer any explanations. Let's see.

He trusts Vergil to keep him in the dark as long as it's physically possible and then some. To be an unapologetic douche about it.

To serve his own interest with little regard for anything else, his single-minded focus zeroing in on the goal while all the rest collapses around him. He trusts this will cloud his judgement, which he ultimately trusts more than his own in spite of what's transpired between the two of them.

To do everything in his power to rid himself of what he perceives as vulnerabilities, to purge anything that he thinks is slowing him down, to rip his past apart and set it on fire if need be. Piss on it for the good measure. To have no friends and no enemies, only obstacles and advantages that sometimes come in human disguise. To know better, see past the mortal weaknesses of emotions and attachments.

To correct Dante's mistakes or at least laugh at him.

He trusts Vergil to use him.

If it comes to that, he trusts Vergil to kill him. He trusts he's able to make that call.

In other words, Dante doesn't trust Vergil in any sense that a normal, sane person would understand the notion. Obviously. But this was never about that. He never asked him to. Trusted him enough to do that.

Dante took the hand and let himself be pulled to the other side. A small step, and then they could both pretend that it's alright. They've had plenty of practice at that. 

He followed. In some parallel universe, there comes a day when he's told why.

The ferry he's still having some doubts about curtseys and bows to the sons of Sparda but doesn't submerge entirely. Good − he's enjoying having dry clothes for once, so he'd be overjoyed if the river didn't wish to make closer acquaintance with them. To that end, it's convenient they're apparently the only ones making waves around here, no wind or other sailors to be found. As far as Dante's aware, the water carrying them is just that, lead-gray and malodorous as it is. Underneath the quilt of the foliage, the mire is so dark that there's no way to estimate where, how far beneath them, the bed of it lies. It's the underworld, he reminds himself: the lake could be bottomless and he'd be none the wiser. All the more reason to refrain from swimming, he thinks as they jerk into movement. Vergil plunges the pole into the depths expertly, as if he were an old hand at operating log driving equipment. The mechanics of how it works are a bit unclear since Dante gets the impression the staff doesn't meet the bottom (if it's there). Laws of physics are a bit wonky in the area, perhaps? Hell doesn't care; the swinging works and they glide forward into the mist, eerily silent.

However apt the boater may be at his chore, Dante determines early on that this will be slow going anyway. He's got a hunch that guesstimates the marsh is huge. They haven't even been given a horizon yet. It's still foggy and something still creates the impression they're being watched very closely. How to describe it… like they're sailing on the whites of a giant, unblinking eyeball. This'll go wrong spectacularly, just watch.

Frankly, he's pretty indifferent about that, very zen. It's far from what bugs him the most. The problem is − So far, it's been tolerable. Put one foot in front of the other, march, concentrate on the movements. Compared to the present, he's for the most part been sleepwalking during the first leg of their voyage. Now he's squeezed into some stiffy lotus position with his knee poking precariously over the edge, trying not to sit on the boys and suffering from hyperconsciousness. Not great, not great at all.

Observing how the dried plants get crushed against the logs and turn into colorful dust doesn't amuse Dante for long. His life is a stimulus-enriched cage he has scraped together for himself for a purpose; when there's nothing going on, he gets restless, his nerves start to teeter on the edge of the quagmire others might call thinking and self-awareness. Stimulus one: bashing in demon skulls. Stimulus two: getting drunk with the money he gets from the bashing. Together, they're barely enough. Now that he's doing physically ok, he can and will fixate on topics other than his fatigue, and he hasn't got those crutches handy. Crap.

Dante tugs the sleeve of his shirt, feeling his discomfort begin to rattle inside his head. Whatever you do, don't picture an elephant, right? Okay, time to divert his attention. Uhm. Diversions. He draws a blank. Hey, somebody must have painted this scene at some point in history, he notes, tasting his desperation. Dante and his guide crossing the Styx, the stuff of legends. He'd sketch it himself, had any charcoal and a surface to doodle on. Hell, by now he'd even do it with his own blood, pay homage to Vergil here. Vergil, who is kind of close and smells good.

You failed! Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect your 200 in salary. Here are the reflections you wanted to avoid. Option one: unhappy thoughts varying from Mundus disfiguring his captive to pondering how long the devil in question has been given to recover and grow stronger than before in local time or dog years. Option two: disturbing sexy thoughts, fueled by prolonged proximity and indecent amount of skin contact, which can be presented in the advanced mathematical formula of being greater than zero. Abort, abort. He thinks he can smell the industrial cleaner Vergil made him to clean his garb with back at the lab lingering in the fibers of cotton. No recollection of swiping away the bowels and bits of the scientist's flesh from his person, no signs of it remaining in present moment; the guy might as well never have existed. Nice and simple, to be able to erase your troubles like that. Sparda's blood is far more obstinate. Should've stolen another bottle for a takeaway cocktail.

Sitting next to Vergil, who is long-legged and standing to guide them forward with the stick, brings Dante to the level of his crotch. He's painfully aware. Of course, their fit is already pretty tight and thus crawling in front of his feet would be impossible without keeling over into the marsh; even turning to see his mug would take some maneuvering. It's hard not to envision doing it no matter what. The pun is dreadful and accurate to an unfortunate degree.

While the shower thought of Vergil blowing him is enough to drive him insane, there is somehow a more compelling urge to try and please him with a body that has only ever harmed him. He'd have to close his eyes in this scenario too, because Dante's hungry stare would be glued to him while the weight of him would sit heavily on his tongue. He'd have to look, to witness how Vergil would wear raw pleasure, devour his satisfaction. He has difficulties imagining it. Would his mouth twist and fall open; would he bite it, lick the corner, stifle a sigh with a tense hand? Could Dante steal a moan out of him or get him to bury his grip into his scalp, make his hips thrust against him and make him set a new rhythm for them, gorgeously greedy, and for a fleeting moment, possessive? Would he flush, cradle Dante's head and jaw and feel his own heat through his cheeks? Would he finish on his face or inside of him, his salt bitter and musky − and if he behaved himself, would he nudge Dante's thighs apart to bring him off with the sole of his boot? Let Dante kiss him with his sore lips afterwards? He can't help entertaining the delusion of playing an active role even though it's more than likely he'd be reduced to an inert mess. Shivering. Sobbing. Touch-starved, desperate, undignified.

Ghhh.

In his fancies, being full and sharing a body is equated to being complete. Dante was careful to keep his gaze occupied with less incendiary subjects when he had to dress him, but now it occurs to him that Vergil's proportions have changed for the bigger from the length of his spine to the size of his hands. It's not a stretch to assume the same principle applies down there, right?

Jesus fucking Christ. Good job, Dante compliments his moronic monkey brain. This is what happens when the world abandons him and he's forced to become idle. He longs for a cigarette, could use the distraction. He's developing a nervous tic in his eye.

(The thought is still hot.)

The thing is, the lack of their usual rituals is partially to blame for this. Their step marks used to be highly polished: they would bump into each other, then they'd banter for a minute, which usually meant at least a couple of overtly flirty comments they'd both pretend to ignore like the pros they are, and then Dante would get a sword in his solar plexus. Talk about satisfying conclusions. In current reality, he's neglected, lost, left to his own devices. He is no better than a Pavlov's dog and now the fundaments of his gospel have overturned. What else is there to do but turn belly up, drool and whine? He expected Vergil to shove Yamato deep into his chest the second he was reunited with her in the laboratory; he has no idea how the powered-up devil form is triggered for the first time and his guts tell him it's not by being simply skewered, but he wouldn't put it past Vergil to try to make him reach it the old way in any case, if only out spite and habit. (Please.)

But no. It's been so long since the last time, no wonder he's going crazy. So far, he's only had a taste. A slit on his finger is just mean, Vergil's a tease. Dante's not a masochist (except for all the ways he totally is, but those are mainly not sexual, if there is such a thing for him at this point, and have more to do with his guilt), but it's Vergil's preferred way of communication and brotherly affection. Isn't it only natural then that his yearning has also bled into violence; that's why it was hard not to eroticize being impaled on the Alastor, for example. As a substitute for something he thought he'd never get again, it was a decent experience; sharp agony, the inscription on the statue he snatched the weapon from promising him eternal enslavement, the electric current zapping his insides to remind him he was still technically alive. That's why he's now so frustrated. Penetration. The imagery is ridiculously phallic, and yet. He wants Yamato. The katana sinking inside him, intent, meaningful contact. If Vergil allowed him to, he'd get on his knees for him and suckle the tip of Yamato like the head of his cock, he'd deepthroat the blade and feel grateful, welcome the pain.

(He truly madly deeply did expect Vergil to shove the katana in him, but he didn't. Clearly, it's no longer a priority to ensure that he's shown his place, no need to assert dominance.

Dante is just not that important to him.)

What can be concluded from this is that he has a severe oral fixation. Sure, and then what? Yamato is an extension of him. It's not like he'd ever work Dante open with his teeth and fingers, so he makes do. Without the spearing to anchor him anywhere, he's less real, which unfortunately does nothing to ease his malaise.

He groans and gets ignored. Coping is a full-time assignment, this situation is unfair no matter what Vergil would say about his word choices. On his regular weekdays, he at least has the option to appease his addictive personality with substance abuse, gets to pick his poison. Alcohol, most often: drugs are not worth their price when he isn't made of money, not to mention that the quality is often in doubt and the overall acquiring process is a drag and requires a degree of sociability. With booze, you know what you get. That's a comfort, a rarity to him. He had a _system_ when Vergil was dead, he reflects for the thousandth time. Could've drifted in the tankard endlessly if there was an ounce to drink in it. An in-between state is highly stressful and he's much, much too sober. He'll say it again − he's not ready for this, not even for things to get better.

Why is Dante here, seriously? He's absolutely useless. They're marching to their demise and he's whining to himself. It's typical, but damn if he doesn't sometimes wish he wasn't someone who didn't dedicate the majority of his brain capacity to either dreaming about sucking off his brother or suppressing the fantasies. He's tied himself into knots and can't trust himself with scissors. This is intolerable.

Vergil seems to notice him squirming and wiggling about. “Careful.”

So it's probably wise to avoid rocking the boat and making it capsize. Roger that. Should he keep mum as well? Whatever, it's not him who broke the silence, he can't be blamed anymore.

Latching onto the carelessly thrown lifebuoy, Dante hums a snatch of _Row, Row, Row Your Boat_. When it garners no reaction, he sings another verse, ending it in “If you see a Gigapede, don't forget to scream”. If you ask him, it would be a scream of joy now − a huge flying monster would be a welcome sight, although he would rather pick something that poses a bigger challenge than the bugs he has slain. Figuratively, since the myriapod in the tower was humongous. He sighs; a poet's got to stand a lot for the sake of the meter.

“I see your taste in music has not improved,” Vergil says when he's done with the impromptu musical number, deadpan as ever.

“I can do metal and other genres too if you give me a song,” Dante suggests.

Unsurprisingly, Vergil doesn't bother replying. Dante wouldn't be shocked if he couldn't actually name a track. While it's been well-established that his ideas are creative, there's a strong current of anti-artistic energy in him, which is best showcased in the sans-pareil monotone he's able to convey even without uttering a syllable. Eva had tried her best to coax him into playing an instrument, but she'd only manage to make him plunk his way through the cello and violin exercises in a technically faultless but utterly inanimate and passionless manner, glowing with boredom and eagerness to get back to his beloved written word − to read, to Dante's knowledge he's never written a thing by his own hand. He didn't precisely hate musical stuff, that's not accurate. He didn't mind listening to Dante play for him on the piano, the strings he had shunned, the flute, the guitar, the tambourine or whatever experimental apparatus he could fashion out of various household items and would make a sound when hit, but his eyes would glaze over when Dante'd gush about his beethovens and beatleses. For his part, Dante would get frustrated at how he didn't get it, because he wanted his supposed other half to share his enthusiasm (because he was jealous of his interests that weren't him). The same thing happened with visual arts - the only way you could drag Dante to the library was to show him some glossy art pages or give him an opportunity to bother his brother who was getting way too captivated by literature again. In turn, Vergil would never fail to criticize and compliment his watercolors and pastels but would dump the oil paints on his head if he had the gall to try and make him use them, which would lead to them doing an abstract piece on the living room floor while wresting and making Mom regret ever having bought the supplies. Summa summarum: Vergil was a nerd and Dante was the one who knew his tunes.

He hasn't drawn a portrait since, or picked up a harp. No, Nevan doesn't count. At least he reckons he's artsy with all the killing he does. If wished were horses, he'd currently have something else to kill than time.

Well. Reminiscence eats away any inspiration he might have had for picking a carol himself. What else is there to prattle about?

“Also got a collection of really tasteless jokes about bass players if you're feeling it. No?”

Nah. Tough crowd. Hmm. Then?

“You said there wouldn't be a lot of wandering.”

Vergil, muse for eloquence, hnns in the affirmative.

“When are we getting there? Are we there yet?” Dante pesters him further.

“Soon enough. We are more than halfway through,” comes the reply − not exactly frustrated, but a touch long-suffering nevertheless. When you put it that way, it is kind of a social faux pass to be in rush to your own death and the armageddon, isn't it?

“Gotcha. Bet you regret not strangling me with the umbilical cord now. I'm not very good travelling company, I'm told. I'm too impatient or whatever, I never really seem to get to the ends of the complaints for some reason,” he says. He's not convinced he has got a real personality, but if he does, he suspects “annoying” would be one of its cornerstones. More likely he's subbed a temperament with this relentless need to push against boundaries, to see how far he can take it until Vergil chugs him into the sea to swim with sharks and his tears.

“I suspect it was not for lack of trying. As to your rashness, I grew up with you. It is hardly surprising.”

How much can he recall post resurrection? Undoubtedly some, but he's had plenty of opportunities to observe Dante fidgeting from their boyhood to their teens, so the comment is not much use on that front. Dante's not in the mood to seriously harass him about it. The extent of Vergil's amnesia is clearly top-secret stuff and he would sooner force a stone weep or sing with him than be a successful interrogator of his tight-lipped inquisitor. That means he should come up with something else to say; while Vergil seems to be in reasonably high spirits, this bog freezes over and lets the four horsemen of the apocalypse skate across it before he makes small talk on his own.

Ahh, he wants a fucking drink.

The only noise Dante is accompanied with are the sounds of the marsh lapping almost imperceptibly, the creaking of the raft and Vergil's steady heart. It's all he's ever wanted, isn't it, and it's unbearable.

“Talk to me.”

The “about what?” is implied wordlessly.

“I mean,” Dante says, tries to explain himself when he's not sure what he's asking for, “it doesn't have to be about anything. I'm just − I'm having a hard time sitting still with all this inactivity.”

It's easy enough to stop there. To admit to himself and Vergil that he wants to be told a bedtime story is fine, if juvenile. Going to the territory of telling him he wants to sleep with him in any sense of the concept is taking it too far. Even if he kind of did just a while ago, fell asleep with him in the bed. Let's call the censorship his gratitude. 

The quietude is thick and long living. Vergil pets it languidly. Now that they're here, the tables have turned and he seems to have forgotten how keen he was to descend. There is no sign of the “Are you finally done?” part of his persona down under, which might be a blessing. No fighting in the war room or on the war ship is a sensible policy.

When he finally speaks, a long while after any hope of him doing so has been abandoned, it hits Dante with the force of a bullet in the gut. Jesus, Vergil, give a guy a warning next time. A piece falls into place, something he hasn't been able to verbalize before: he's missed this. Dante's face cracks into a spontaneous grimace that takes him by surprise nearly as much as the speaking. His mouth isn't used to genuine expressions − he's going to sprain it if he keeps abusing it.

Instantly recognizing the rhythm and the rhymes, Dante grins like a madman.

“I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles,” Vergil recites by rote, leisurely. There's a hint of amusement or, dare he say it, fondness in him.

Yeah, there should be. Good times.

(Dante also might have to recalculate and admit that his sibling may be holding a grudge. Can't really fault him for having some hang-ups about Mundus.)

“I know this one! It's what Mom used to read to us when one of us was giving the silent treatment to the other after a fight or whatnot.”

_Mom, Vergil's a jerk! Again!_

_I'll read you a poem and you can calm down a bit. Then you can tell me all about it. Okay, sweetie?_

Eva sits on the couch that's worn soft with use and has a pleasant leathery scent, not unlike the book on her knee. Dante leans his head against the other one and feels her fingers comb through his mop, waiting for her to chide him about it gently since his sibling can keep his untangled. Mom's silly, doesn't get that he prefers it when she does it. Sunlight streams out of the window: her hair is always rich in its tone, but it looks more golden than usual. It's a good day, although you couldn't tell that by her looks. Much like her firstborn, she is always immaculate and keeps up appearances even when the stage is empty behind the curtain. Her lipstick never stains and the red never floods out of the border of her silent or slurring mouth as she takes a sip, the another.

Today, her voice is crystal clear as she murmurs the poem like a melody, because that's what it is, a children's rhyme. She hums:

“And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright.”

He has Trish and the photograph, but when he tries to focus on her face, he disremembers. Dante knows the colors, but her features have melted into a blur and he can't make out any gestures − he can merely project the way Trish's face moves on the silver screen of his memories. Must be how those suffering from face blindness perceive others. It's wrong, it's not Eva, but he's unable to point out why.

He closes his eyes. Nice but not perfect is good enough.

“And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine. “

Vergil's voice weaves itself into Eva's until the choir of his brother, mother and family slowly shifts into just him. It's equally as lovely in a different way. Never much for singing as Dante inherited that and the skill of drawing. His official diagnosis is that he's too deliberate to be an artist, a perfectionist to boot. 

“And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veild the pole.” 

But he's a storyteller. It suits him.

“In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree,” Dante finishes to show him he understands. 

“Is this you flaunting your plan to stab me in the back or are you still dreaming about regrowing the healing tree?” He'd still like to avoid the vortex of his psyche, so discussion it is.

Surprisingly, Vergil doesn't hold his joking, if it can be called such, against him. “I promised to warn you about any stabbing beforehand, yes?”

“You did,” Dante replies emphatically.

“So you keep reminding me.” He digresses. “Wrath and the Styx are a pair by nature and Blake was Mother's favorite poet. You probably remember she had a vast library at her disposal. Mother did own a large number of other titles, correct, but what she truly collected were his works. There were rows upon rows of editions, translations and commentaries of Blake, in some cases even several copies of the exact same book. Very rarely did she read anything else.”

“I,” Dante fumbles, “didn't actually know that.” 

It's the truth. Not much of her is left. Dante has none of her tomes, he's lost her facial expressions and he suspects he only thinks he remembers her voice thanks to Trish's imitation of it. He knows next to nothing about her life: what was she doing with it before she met Sparda? When and how did that happen? Did she see a future for herself after his death or was it going to be a downward spiral for her after her litter would have flown the nest? In truth, he doesn't know her, a person he claims to love. What are the odds for that?

Vergil must know more. He has taken an interest in finding out the facts while Dante has done nothing of the sort and has merely sat on his ass, wondering why the secrets of the universe don't reveal themselves to him. While it doesn't really cost him anything to share as far as Dante can see, he could've kept the morsel of knowledge to himself.

“I am using you,” he wants to say. He appreciates the gesture, can't produce anything of equal value.

(As if it matters in reality. Knowing won't bring her back or fix them. But Vergil's behaving like it has worth.)

There's always honesty. Although it's rare, shiny and expensive for his wallet, it's a poor item to trade since there's probably nothing about him that Vergil's not already aware of, but that's what happens when you drown yourself in solipsism for several decades: there's nothing else to donate. Thanks to him, their childhood flickers bright in his mind, and it's par for the course that its ending does too.

Resentful? Dante? Preposterous. 

He's using Vergil. He wants him to be his private confessional and absolution. Quid pro quo? He can pretend. (If he could make him acknowledge what he did to him… This isn't an effective way of punishing Vergil at all, so why is it such an obsession to him?)

This is a stage where Dante could hit the brakes and salvage the remains of the relatively positive vibes they have going on. He waves to the line when he crosses it like blue murder. If he can't destroy his brother, he'll at least ruin his chipperness. Something in him insists. It opens his mouth and speaks.

“Back then, after she was gone, I wasn't aware that, that you weren't. Dead. I was angry.”

The “I still am” goes unsaid loudly. They hear it. If only could he access the emotion; his anger is dulled by the other bullshit, the heavier unvoiced baggage he's carrying.

Vergil is probably sighing mentally. Poor bastard, forced to babysit someone who seems to actually believe or convinces himself he believes that wrath ends if he tells it.

“I know.”

“But you don't regret it.”

“No.”

Nothing's ended. The fingers Dante has pressed into a vice relax to open his palm, letting the scar breathe in Vergil's honesty. It's not a magical tree, it can't heal him.

After a while, there's a cough to signal Vergil is elaborating. Dante's beginning to suspect he's hearing things.

“It was necessary.”

Ah, right. So very predictable. He always, always just _has_ to do stuff. Must have more power, must shed more blood to have more power, must make sure that no one can have his half of the amulet. He always makes all the choices but only because it has to be done, preferably by him, honest, there's never simply no other way whatsoever. There's got to be a name for that complex and it ain't pretty. (It's contagious, though. _I have to stop you even if that means killing you._ They really are related, aren't they?)

Dante's not disappointed.

“Of course it was. Just like it's necessary that I don't know why. I get it.” If there's a sour tinge to his tone, it's his prerogative because fuck Vergil.

Admittedly, it's his own fault for chasing the dragon of a different outcome for the millionth time. Dante ignores this since it's convenient to do so.

“I have made my choices and have been paying for them, even if you do not agree,” Vergil says conversationally.

This is the man you love, Dante. Do you ever wonder why?

“This gets us nowhere,” Dante huffs, miffed. “You know I'm gonna say something along the lines of 'yeah, and by making them you've taken them away from me, it's my life too, woe is me', and then you imply that I should forget it and let the adults take care of it. We've seen this before, so many times.”

Now Vergil does sigh. It's not a sign of anger but weariness, aimed at nothing in particular. For someone so young − for someone who ultimately hasn't even celebrated his twenties −, he sounds old. A shame that their collective world-weary exhaustion hasn't provided them with wisdom that, or so they say, comes with age and experience.

“What do you want me to say to you, exactly? Dante, I am unsure if you realize this, but sometimes having the choice is harder than not having it.”

“Well, I just have to take your word for it, don't it?”

Dante retreats into himself by watching the point where the smoke embraces the flora. It offers him the same amount of enlightenment as Vergil's platitudes.

“I'm not going anywhere with this. I'm not really asking you to tell me anything,” he admits as he tries to make sense of his own motives. The dusk clouding them refuses to part easily.

A conversation this stilted and unnatural deserves a mercy kill. He doesn't believe there's anything to gain by prolonging it.

The water is gray, the leaves multicolored, the fog ubiquitous. Never any changes.

He makes a wish, nevertheless.

“I want you to tell me a story. I mean, any. Just talk to me.”

Dante shuts up.

The lightning strikes twice.

“Demeter, whom you might remember as the goddess of harvest and fertile soil or the mother of stolen Persephone, has many names and faces,” Vergil eventually begins. In medias res, always.

“She is a lawgiver, the night-mare and the deity of poppy fields. In the chthonic world, she is the cycle of life and death, decay and rebirth from the ashes. On the Stygian shores, she is Demeter Erinys, the implacable; when she bathes in the waters of the river of hatred, she becomes the harbinger of divine vengeance.

In the kingdom of Thessaly grows an ancient grove, dedicated to the goddess. King Erysichthon, the earth-tearer − or as he is sometimes known, Aethon, the blazing one −, is not a pious man. His greed is boundless and omnivorous, and one day he sets his gaze on the woods, sees verdant fields and golden corn silk where there are oaks, shrubs and moss. His men cut down every plant save for one particularly old and robust tree. The votive wreaths adorning its trunk and branches tell them it is sacred; it carries the prayers Demeter has granted to her supplicants, and the men refuse to fell it. But the king is adamant: he takes arms himself and strikes the oak with an axe. Blood begins to pour out from the wound in the bark, the tree sighs and its leaves blanch, and every man that voices a concern he beheads against the trunk of the dying acorn. His assault does not merely kill the oak but also the nymph living inside of it. In her dying words, she swears revenge on the violator that broke a vow between mankind and the divine.

Demeter hears the death curse. She is old, a daughter of Time himself, and as such, retribution is as familiar to her as her siblings and many children. She knows that any damage done to the body of a mortal is only physical − it will either heal or it will not, it is but pain. To truly conquer a man and bring your vengeance upon him, you must first break his mind; everything else follows.

She knows this and asks for a goddess, one that she can never meet face to face. Her pleads reach the wasteland where Limos, the Famine and baleful starvation, dwells in her insatiable hunger. She accepts. Limos finds Erysichton asleep and burrows herself into his lungs and hollow veins, breathes her plague on his lips and into his stomach. Craving colors his dreams and turns them into desperate nightmares; when he wakes, he orders his servant to prepare him a banquet, but as he eats, he grows hungrier between every bite. His desire gains monumental strength: no river or plantation will satisfy him with its fruits, no city is prosperous enough to sate him. The king sells his throne for food and still asks for more.

Eventually, Erysichthon has consumed all his wealth, plunged himself into poverty and lost everything. He is only left with his loving daughter Mesta, once raped by Poseidon and gifted with the ability to shape shift in exchange for her lost virtue. The father sells his offspring to slavery and tries to gratify his gluttony with the gold numerous times, but the dutiful child sets herself free from every shackle placed upon her and always comes back to him. And thus Demeter exacts her revenge, little by little, on a slow burn. Tormented by the endless hunger gnawing his bones, one night the former king tears his limbs apart and devours himself until nothing remains.”

And they lived happily ever after, Vergil says not.

His voice stretches and undulates in the words. Spinning a net of sentences that settles upon them softly and dreamlike, it's see-through enough to fool an untrained eye. The calmness in Vergil is different than his usual brand of tranquility, more vibrant and animated. He does not create, but that which he imitates he makes his own.

A reading Vergil used to be a surefire trick to banish the monsters skulking in the corners of Dante's room. There's a comparison to be made here; his thoughts finally leave him alone. Listening to Vergil talk like this is being. Simple. Effortless. He shouldn't ruin it by analyzing what's been said.

No dice. Still got to say something, reluctant as he is to break their vigil. They're adults and far from any fairytales, so the moment can't last.

Dante nudges off the blanket. “Well, thanks for indulging me. Damn if that wasn't depressing, though, or then the didactic stuff is beyond me. There a reason why this fable on your mind?"

“Not every story has a hidden meaning. You should know this by now,” Vergil replies. His speech is ever so slightly worn, a rasp creeping in it.

“But yours do, you've taught me that much.”

“We are crossing the Styx for revenge, are we not?” 

“No,” Dante thinks but doesn't say. He'd like to be able to claim he's currently giving a damn about their foe. “You might be, but I'm here for you.”

Vergil's the one to pierce the silence. “_nil mortalibus ardui est; caelum ipsum petimus stultitia_,” he states, his faint sarcasm plain as a day. 

“You are doing it on purpose. The thing where you try to distract me by saying something you think I don't understand,” Dante points out.

His twin doesn't deny it. “Is it working?

“Yeah,” he says, shuffles his weight a bit. Yes, yes it is, but not how he thinks.

A second cog finds its place. Dante turns it around, folds and unfolds. The thought comes to him unbidden; should he voice it?

He could hide it.

He could have an advantage. What a novel thought.

He could just listen, steal a handful of moments never meant for him.

He's been thinking about it in the background for a while now.

“_Nothing is_ _difficult for mortals; in our foolishness, we pursue the sky itself,”_ Dante says. The translation rings true when it's out in the open. Must be something he's heard in another lifetime, when he had someone who would help him with the bits he didn't get.

There's a sound of fabric rustling next to him. Their speed, maintained through the story, slows down when his psychopomp turns to take a good look at him. Dante keeps his expression neutral.

Surprise, surprise. They're together in this game.

It so happens that remembering is easier when he isn't running on low battery and there's nothing acutely threatening in the environment. Maybe he understands Latin better than he's let on when he's not entirely preoccupied with the guy he's tragically in love with literally falling apart on his arms; incredible. Another set of synapses connecting: his head on Vergil's lap this time. Vergil teaching him how to conjugate verbs, a thick grammar in hovering above his head. peto, I request. petis, you request, Dante says. He requests, third person singular, Vergil asks. petimus! No, Vergil says, petit. What you have is first person plural. Petimus, we request, beg, pursue, desire. Maybe it's merely imaginary, a convenient false memory. Doesn't take away the understanding.

_tantus amor menti_, said he. It's been scientifically proven Dante is a daft one but come on, there are words even he knows. There are lines he has memorized, that come back to him now and then. _odi et amo; I love and I hate_.

_amor menti. _It wasn't a complete sentence, he still didn't understand practically anything of substance. Without any context, there's not a lot he can deduce; a pity he missed all the previous ones too. Anyhow, he's savvy enough not to read too much into it. Judging by what he recalls from the lines Vergil tossed at his way earlier and the contents of the book itself, the verse was likely raving about the dangers of embarking on such ludicrous and suicidal projects as descending to Hell and swimming there, his brother's strange attempt at humor. He does that, sometimes. Answers his jibes and come-hither gestures with his own laconicisms. _I was so eager to see you, I couldn't concentrate on preparations for the bash. _

All in all, Dante's left with a bad feeling that spreads through him like the expanse of this body of water, but it merely simmers down there, avoids breaking the surface.

The pet knew. Does Vergil?

He feels Vergil's eventual wine-dark smile on him, a drop of tannat on his palate in strange synesthesia. He slowly picks up the pace again and gazes at the stubbornly non-existent skyline.

“I would translate the partitive genitive 'ardui' as 'too difficult ' and the pronoun 'ipse' in 'caelum ipsum' as 'even the sky',” he says simply. His tone is matter of fact and washed out when he soon adds: "We are almost there."

The shroud of fog in front of them yields to show he's speaking the truth − land ahoy. Another shore greets them, virtually identical to the one they left behind.

Ah, heck. Dante has been wringing his hands and tearing off a cuticle without noticing. The blood gathers into a small pearl, then flows over to stain his fingers, fresh and warm. Vergil shifts; Dante feels the movement brush against the border of his mind. Nearly familiar somehow. It disappears as quickly as it came, as if burned. Vergil lets out a sound he can't categorize.

In the middle of the horny daydreams he was bedeviled by earlier, Dante was lamenting how he's something else than a passive lump only when he's actively murdering people he hasn't been paid to whack. In hindsight, that was him underestimating his abilities. Murder is his main talent, but he can complicate matters by other means too.

This, ladies and gents, is naturally the part where Dante fucks up. Took him longer than you'd guess, honestly.

If he were asked about it later (he isn't, not really, which is fault too), he couldn't describe how he does it. Maybe his legs went asleep at some point and it escapes his notice due to all the excitement; maybe he tries to flex them unconsciously or tries to get up and gets tangled in his own limbs. When he's engrossed in the doom and gloom of his self-destructive urges, everything is possible. At any rate, the results are what matters.

He falls.

For all that it appears like a mostly normal lake, tumbling through the depths of it feels like nothing; he expects to get his mouth and nostrils full of muddy fluids and the persistent swampy, sewer-y aroma that's been hanging around them during the cruise, get his pants wet. Nope, no muck, no nothing. There's his fluke of today.

If this were a regular pond, though, he could do something to prevent himself from sinking further. Swim or whatever. No such luck in that department. The space beneath is a vacuum, so it's an uncontrollable spin down for him.

Down he goes.

It happens rapidly. Estimating how far he's been submerged is simply impossible when it all stops, but it's clear enough that he'd run out of oxygen on his way back if this was a real puddle, demonic physique notwithstanding. Perhaps it's fortunate that it's not a plain jane as far as pools go, Dante ponders as he hangs upside down, suddenly suspended. Asphyxiation would be a bummer, Vergil may cry. Instead, there is something like a stream, an invisible current that pulls him deeper, and it's now weakened so that he is dangling head-first from a fixed point, his feet pointing to the direction he came from. It's less uncomfortable than what it sounds like if you don't count how fucking unnerving it is. Why isn't his blood surging into his head? What is this place?

Taking stock of the situation is pointless. There's nothing to see again apart from the perpetual mist that's black instead of white here. The earthy smell of the quagmire is gone for sure, just like any other sensation. It is almost as if he's floating but it's the wrong kind of that, a void rendering him weightless instead of the buoyancy one could expect a body of water to have.

Shit. How does he get out?

Wait − if he looks at his toes and squints, he thinks he can detect waves somewhere in the distance. Shouldn't be possible since they've got to be a million miles away by now; and yet it does look like the surface of the river looms above him like a window of frosted glass, opaque.

Can Vergil see him? At least he wasn't dumb enough to jump after him, it seems. Small mercies. Someone's got to save him and it's not looking likely that's going to be him.

Dante flops and fails around because there's nothing else to do. Somehow, he manages to turn upright. Though it may not be him doing the heavy lifting; the world reorientates itself abruptly with a forcible tug when he's kicking and tossing. His head rings with the motion and resulting sea sickness, and as it resides, Dante finds himself standing on his soles.

No ground, didn't really anticipate to have one. Doesn't still feel like a good omen. The netherworld being empty hasn't hitherto given much cause for celebration, he thinks, looking around. Neither has darkness, so he ought to be extra careful about his wishes. What's going on?

It's as if something in the blackness slowly inhales all the smoke away.

Underneath the cover of the smog, there's a scene being performed. At first, Dante suspects he's having a seizure: everything is muddled and blurred beyond recognition. Sadly, it isn't a funhouse with warped mirrors. High-resolution details start to appear if you look closely, and when he does, there's no going to back to the oblivion. Since something in his chest starts to beat so frantically it hurts, he probably does get a convulsion or a stroke of sorts and is hopefully dying.

One of the first things he notices is that every color in his vicinity has been inverted into its polar opposite. Reminiscent of a lonely candle in the night, Vergil's coat stands out in its pale yellow glow and shouts louder than the surrounding blues, greys and blacks. The visual clue is very useful because it takes a while for Dante to make out the outlines of his body.

The issue is that there's not a lot of it remaining.

Lying on what's left of his back on a familiar piece of stone, Vergil looks very small. Most of his dissected body has been flayed alive − or no, actually it's the other way round, he's been quite thoroughly excarnated. See, it's not his skin that's been stripped off meticulously, it's his flesh. The damage looks less graphic when the weird bluish tones make the gore less assaultive; Dante notes detachedly that the contents of his stomach are gone entirely, the stomach itself too, and that the broken crate of his ribs only consists of a pair of lungs and a faintly breathing heart, exposed for his pleasure. His spine ends at the bottom of his thorax, otherwise it's been cut off and discarded somewhere along with his feet, shins and thighs, hips, bowels. Unlike with his lower parts, his arms along with his degloved hands have been emptied so that when they lie spread open in a twisted adaptation of the crucifixion of Christ, only his hide rests on the dark rock, missing the veins and bones. It's leathery and stretched and pinned down by dozens of petite, angrily red astral swords. Ah, of course. They're Vergil's, a signature, his summons of the Force Edge.

All the exposed raw tissue must reek even if the majority of his plasma and serous fluid has obviously been let, but Dante doesn't sense it.

What little is left of his upper body is writhing weakly in tiny, irregular pulses that mirror his heartbeat. How much of it is result of conscious effort is tough to tell. It's a miracle he's doing it in any case, and as can often be said about wonders in their lives, it's hardly a positive one.

Lying mutilated on the skin of his back, Vergil stares at the proverbial sky, unseeing. It's not that his eyes have been gouged out that's so sickening, even though the gouging has certainly taken place and it kills him (_the tip of Yamato meeting the back of the socket almost gently, the reproachful touch of a father. This is where you were wrong; humans will always be humans, no more. You are weak but your body can be repurposed. I will enlighten you._) − it's just that, judging by the dark hue, the two shadowy cavities in the middle of his blood-blue face, that all pulp in their immediate vicinity has been chiseled away to reveal his skull. The sight is grinning at him, holding him so enthralled that noticing anything else takes some time.

A river.

An observer.

A memory.

The third character standing in the stream that keeps pumping water down into the same chasm Vergil plummeted into in the aftermath of Temen-ni-gru is a copy of him in all his teenaged glory. The second Vergil, black as ebony (_white_), is standing statue-still, his wrists crossed and his electric blue-green eyes fixed at his mangled duplicate, all three of them. The distance between the doublets of his twin is approximately the same as it was when Dante was desperate to close it, when Vergil's heel met the platform he's now nailed on.

Even though he has no eyeballs and optic tracts, Dante gets the impression Vergil is aware of the doppelgänger on some level, that he sees everything.

_You know what happens if you fail me._ A reverberation with no source or sound runs on Dante's eardrums and peritoneum.

Somewhere, a fugue is playing.

(Strange fate, isn't it?)

_You have already given up everything else. You have lost. Submit._

(Useless scum. Has the Sparda blood been spoiled over the ages?)

_To me, you are useful but not indispensable, son of Sparda. I can replace you. Your resistance to the light will only make sure that I will._

(Dante, I will return.)

_I shall give you your last chance._

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

“Dante,” Vergil spills out silently.

The black figure changes shapes. Dante startles without moving. Now it's him, dressed in the clothes he wore on the day it all fell apart, his shaggy hair and a coat that's shredded to hell and back at this point (he patched it up later, doesn't know why). An exact copy down to the smallest idiosyncrasies, just with the colors flipped to their negatives. Turquoise, white, dashes of blue in the metal parts. And yet − this can't be what he looked like when he stood in front of Vergil with his back against the abyss. He can't see his own eyes, the fringe has fallen over them and thrown a shadow where there cannot have been one; he saw so clearly, the blood, how Vergil's jaw jumped before he did, the flash of Yamato on his palm. This Dante's hair hides half his face and what's left he doesn't recognize. Cannot be him, can't be his, wasn't him. The rictus his mouth has formed is neither a smirk nor a sneer, not recognizable as any as any human emotion. He's never seen it on anyone's face, too otherworldly, frightening, much less on his own. In front of him, Dante's mouth forms a gaping smirk with the gravity of a black hole. It doesn't contort to the same lines when he fumbles to touch his lips with his hands, doesn't, he knows this, he cannot reach them, where they curve, unable to let him verify what he knows to be true. They shiver as he stands in front of Vergil with his back against the abyss. Nothing between them but water running down, down, down. Nowhere for Vergil to go, cornered.

This cannot be what it was like for him.

Apparently sensing the change, Vergil − he stops moving. Difficult to notice, what with how feeble his struggle has been, but the absence of fighting is magnified by the sight of something in him that Dante didn't think he'd have any more breaking. A clear cut: there was a light that he didn't see while it was there, the dimmest of embers still smoldering long after the fire has gone out, that is now switched off. It is, exists, and just as easily stops being, buries itself a cemetery of coal and ash.

Vergil's drained body cries out a final boneseeking sigh; Dante's body can't tell which part of it receives it, just that it does and he senses it razing its way deeper into him than almost any other sensation ever has. The perception blends itself into the rapid stream running beneath his shoes and with it, coalesces into a remembered blade against his neck. _Leave me. Am I being defeated? I am staying. _It's quiet, and that's what makes it so destructive. It's all that is left in him and of him and it's mechanic, merely his vocal cords contracting under the weight of the approaching rigor mortis.

It's not death. It was never about dying. It's giving up.

Vergil gives up to the corruption.

His mouth never closes after its last attempt at making noise. Torn open into a rigid wound, it bleeds. Thick, viscous white (_black_) liquid starts to flood out of it in pulses and gulps. It sets upon every inch and encases him with a shiny coating, its surface gleaming wetly like something shrink wrapped, that accumulates in the empty spaces, forming him new (_old, familiar_) limbs, a torso. A helmet.

Dante can't watch this.

Trying to close his eyes tight like a fist, he discovers that they don't obey and keep imitating Vergil's eyeless stare, or then the colors stream through his lids bright as neon. Someone rip them off, he's praying.

Then − a bubble bursts. A swish of quills fills his ears as the borderless pocket of space around him starts to fill up with chilly, smelly marsh water which floods on top of the river he's standing in, the one he can't sense. All of a sudden, Dante and his surroundings have turned upside down again without him moving a muscle; but none of this interrupts the play going on and on in front of him, not even when the new outpour stratifies and quickly reaches the white mass on the pedestal. On it, an appendage that's currently a crude, grotesque imitation of an arm twitches.

A yell.

“Move, you idiot!”

At him?

He's cold and transfixed on the spot. There's a malfunction. He should −. He forgets what.

Something rushes to his shoulder, he gets the feeling he should care; then sharp claws burrow into him, finally jolting him out of the stasis. Dante manages to free his gaze from its confines and faces his aggressor.

It's the demonic raptor he's killed and maimed several times now. It avoids the fist, clumsy from the sleepy frost, aimed at its beaks and keeps cawing at him. ”Boss didn't exactly react well to you being such a fucking klutz, so it's me and the boys running things again. But let's yap about that later − I came to tell you to hurry the fuck up and to remind you you're able to use your legs and _get out.”_

“I − how's Vergil?” he croaks.

“Catatonic, what do ya think? I said later. Do it, deadweight, shake a leg. Now!” it screams and flutters its wings in a panicked flurry of movement.

Dante stares. He's distantly aware of another appendage convulsing, Frankenstein's monster waking up.

“This isn't real! Get your hopeless ass up or you'll drown and kill him again.”

Right, right. Just… “How?” he grunts. The marionette is beginning its dance but he's too heavy and weightless to follow suit. The liquid rushes past his belly, rises to his breast.

“Move your feet,” the bird advises. It doesn't have the patience to wait for him: it flies up and close to his face and repeats the order. “Do it! Focus on me, move your feet.”

With great pains, Dante closes his mind to the way the figure on the stone sits up. He moves a foot. The world moves in turn.

Everything's turning on its axis again like a pendulum. A giant swing flings him and the crow digging into his arm over the glassy border of the surface. The lake is barely deep enough to graze his knees when he stumbles into a dimension that he's slightly more familiar with. Jerkily, his movements jumpy and frenzied, he wades towards the shore to collapse on it. Vergil doesn't proffer a hand this time because he is lying in a heap on the ground, the big purple-black panther curled to form a protective wall around him; Dante's vision is spotty after the bombardment, everything is swimming but only his shins are soaked in odorless water, the harsh light of this realm would be almost a soothing rest to it if he could blink and focus.

Next thing he knows, he's back on firm ground. Home sweet home. His legs give out under him in a snap. On all fours, he dry-heaves and hurls out spit until nothing exits his mouth, then keeps going; his empty insides rebel against him and refuse to regurgitate the sickness wallowing inside. He's suddenly glad for not hunting for more food earlier, because in that case he'd be throwing up the contents of his stomach until doomsday. As it is, he spews out what seems to be every drop of saliva inside his body and starts to vomit traces of blood, likely from his lungs that the hacking has irritated, or at least that's what it feels like with the prickling, grating pain that's settled somewhere near them in his chest. That's new.

Again, his life is coming full circle. After a while, he finds himself in a fetal position in his own expectoration, having seen the black void that is the Angelo swallow Vergil whole. He's choking in something and he suspects it isn't his own sputum but the question: is _this_ Vergil's hatred?

He did not want them to see things, he said that himself, he wanted to keep them safe − to keep Hades at bay. He claimed the reality could be bend, that it would adapt to the patient. This is what he saw in the river of wrath. This is Vergil's personal Hell.

“Did you not want to hear what he did to me?” his imaginary brother asked him in his voice, silk hiding steel. Bitter laughter comes out of his windpipe as a raspy hiccup. Of course he blames, hates, Dante. Vergil hates Dante. He knew, of course he knew, he did, he's seen it in him and his memories and dreams countless times, he hears him say it even when he's never voiced it, that it's him who he has always despised, he knows, why wouldn't he when he does it himself, knows himself to be guilty because he misspoke and was stupid and didn't see and hates, he did, he knows, it should not come as a surprise, but it burns like someone has now flayed him and submerged him in boiling water. He gasps for air and fills his organs with fire.

He knew Vergil would hate him. But − what should he do with his fear?

And − yet Vergil. Yet, despite everything, yet Vergil is loyal enough that the fact he blames Dante is the last thing he would confess when tortured.

Fighting the emotions, Dante asks himself why he is crumbling to pieces over this. Funny, it's basically a rhetoric question. Concentrate on the hate to ignore Vergil's fate in Mundus's hands. So that he won't be having reruns of what he had to behold. It would incapacitate him when Vergil needs him and also, fuck, he's stupid as well and maybe believed that he'd never have to full-on acknowledge the truth he's known since he was eighteen and learned that Vergil had basically faked the first of his many deaths.

The elephant. Don't. What did it feel like when his eyes ruptured, being blinded for the second time -- Dante will beg each and every made-up god and hang himself from a votive tree if that'll make sure this is one of the memories Vergil has forgotten.

Don't picture it.

What doesn't finish off a demon will only make it suffer on the verge of perishing for a while and then go away. He, unfortunately, is made of sterner stuff than this. Once the need to retch begins to subside, he realizes the crow's speaking.

“Hey Red, can you hear me now? This isn't the time and the place to be lying around,” it honks at him.

Dante manages to turn his head towards it. It's sitting still − the orb that he's only noticing now, however, makes a spin and flashes a light at him while balancing on the top of the animal's head, hi to you too he guesses − and keeping a distance. It's also keeping an eye or ten on his prone form and, surprisingly, looks pitying. Yeah, he must paint a pathetic picture with his awesome impression of a beached whale carcass. Dante the artist.

Vergil is indeed knocked out. Goddamn it.This time around, he's ragdoll-slack, looks slightly distressed instead of the usual blankness of coma and is mostly covered by his tabby guard; curiously, unlike Dante he's also entirely drenched from top to toe. A hasty look at the river shows that their dinky little man-of-war has vanished together with the pole and left behind an untouched forest of dead carrion flowers and grasses. For a hot moment, Dante wonders about the logistics of the cat dragging its dependant to safety, maybe by picking him up from the point where his neck meets his back and taking a magnificent leap, before he remembers its handy transformation skill. It's an absurd image that could be entertaining under different circumstances, but seeing how happy the universe seems to be about having a laugh on his dime, he's unamused. Perhaps there are positives sides to him being out, though. No need to act like Dante's not upset and saw nothing.

Great. How many steps back has their progress been pushed in total? They're crazy to seek this battle, it's more obvious than ever.

“Seriously, man. Get up. I get that you're having feelings here, so sad, but, you know, could you do that on your own time? Repress the shit, just for his sake. You're good at that anyway, aren't ya?”

What a lovely pet. Its winning personality must be why his brother is so eager to let it tag along.

Dante hasn't missed this creature one bit, but it's right. Got to pull himself together somehow. He throws up a dry expletive and scrambles to his feet unsteadily. It's not that there's anything wrong with his legs per se, the problem is that they're having trouble supporting his skull, which has gained some serious weight. But the exhaustion will pass: it's not what he's concerned about.

“Is he,” Dante begins. He has to stop and clear his throat. “Is he going to wake up and go berserk?”

“What do you think, dimwit?” the bird says. Rude.

“Doing my best to keep him under for now,” it continues after glancing at the pile of cat, demon and human. “Things like being dropped into the swamp could wake him up, but it's not like _we _would fuck up that way.”

The kitty growls lowly in agreement. The voice gets higher and more threatening lightning-quickly when Dante takes a single step closer to it, wanting to inspect the damage for himself. He halts; the bird clicks its tongue(s?). “Easy now, Shadow. We're on the same side. I know, I know: he hasn't been much good so far, but we've got to remember he's a Sparda brat too and should be as tough as bossman himself.”

Hard to be insulted when it's true.

“Though you shouldn't be getting any closer to him anyway. What the hell were you thinking, pulling a stunt like that?” the bird turns to nag at him, ruffling its wings belligerently.

It's only now that Dante gets defensive. “I wasn't thinking, I fell. By accident.”

“Happens to you a lot, huh, the not thinking thing?” it mutters to itself. Or it tries to, or pretends it's trying: Dante's proficiency in biology is still lacking, but if it's physically able to have an inside voice, this isn't it. In the end, he gets an actual reply: “Well, don't do that again or we won't be so benevolent.”

Dante shudders. Going back there, taking another plunge in what could be a reflection of Vergil's mind, is not a fun idea. “Yeah, you don't have to worry about that.”

“Oh, awesome. Then we can worry about the results of you screwing us over, because fuck me if you didn't, pal. Boss is currently out of commission and yes, he will bite ya if you poke him. Still gotta stick to the plot.”

Dante rubs his temples, the pressure on bone making his headache crackle. Going against the rampaging form of his twin is not the fight he anticipated to have, not at least so early on. “I'm pretty sure I can keep him down with Rebellion, but that's not good enough. Can't waste all my energy on subduing him when I'm supposed to deal with Mundus. But there's no one else to do it.”

“Yup. It's all on you now, big guy; enjoy. Honestly, I'm not thrilled about leaving you on your own devices either.”

Covering his eyes with his palms, Dante hunches over to crouch on the ground. “I have no idea where we're supposed to go,” he groans. Vergil's not a fan of sharing his plans and now it's blowing up in their faces. See, this is hubris, he thinks vehemently. You believe you're impervious and then I'll come to fuck shit up for you. “But you guys are connected to him somehow, aren't you? Now would be an excellent time to tell me you know the direction and what to do so that we get there.”

The bird surprises him by not taking the opportunity to build a dramatic silence. “I know the direction and how to get there,” it parrots him without a pause. Not exactly soothing but it's a start.

It's somewhat difficult to think on your feet when they're wet and when you're also balancing your weight on your heels. Dante tries. “So if we don't wake him up yet, if you do what you can to let him sleep: that means we can activate him or whatever when we want to. Say we only do that when we're literally facing our target − what would happen?”

“My guess is he goes absolutely ballistic at anything dangerous to him. That feral mode of his is all about survival; it would make sense for him to focus on the biggest threat and with the King in the room, that's not gonna be you. No offense,” the bird muses and shrugs. When Dante lifts his head, it considers him with many a piercing eye, calculative.

“That doesn't sound too bad, actually,” he says slowly while getting up. Without any inhibitions, such as caring about his swordsmanship, Vergil is clearly capable or wreaking serious havok. If the fury is aimed at the enemy, they have a chance of staying alive.

“The imperative word here is 'guess'. He could always go for your jugular instead − you know, because that's the way he's programmed to react. A red flag for a bull, if you will. Maybe shouldn't be ruling that out either. I mean, I exist in his mind but can't access that part of it, so what do I know?” While the creature doesn't seem to be concerned about Dante's wellbeing, which is admittedly understandable, its bitterness tells him it's unhappy about what this means for Vergil. Weirdly enough, that could be positive news. Maybe they're not affiliated with Mundus after all.

“Well, that's a risk I've got to take, isn't it? I don't see any viable alternatives here.”

It eyes him one last time. Dante stares back, knowing he's missing some information but convinced he'll do what he can anyway. Then it flings itself into air with renewed vigor.

“Yes, exactly: we'll make a team for sure! Not sayin' it'll be a good one, but hey, it's not like we're gonna be stuck with each other for long. We've even got all these common interests and shit. We don't want to die and you − well, you want a lot of explicit things and I'm not getting into the X-rated stuff with a ten-foot pole, loverboy. But you definitely don't want him to die either, so giddy up, we've a mission here. Aren't you just _excited_?”

Dante stumbles. His self-declared companion doesn't wait for him to regain his balance as it dashes to its feline partner and urges it to move. “Enough with the pep talks and crap. Shadow, let's get this show on the road!”

The cat gets up slowly, radiating distrust at Dante's general direction when it reshapes its body around Vergil to form a mold that's suitable for carrying him around, meaning it grows wing-like arms from its sides and wraps them tightly the bundle on its back, leaving only his head and feet visible. Satisfied with the fit, it trudges into the white steam ahead and the bird darts after it, the orb tucked safely in its claws.

That's how they set out, ready to take on anything. ibimus, ibimus.

The road is still very much figurative. For some reason, he's not missing colors anymore.

After a number of minutes filled with walking and flying in an unchanging landscape, Dante opens his mouth to ask about their current whereabouts. The more talkative familiar answers before he gets it out_._

“It's not far. There's just this one tiny little hurdle we gotta handle, and then it's already battle time. A cakewalk, you could say.”

Dante doesn't like the sound of that, but ehh, he's sure it's fine. Few things scare him after the trip in the lake.

Besides. In mythology, the Styx is occasionally said to turn mortals bathing in it invulnerable. There was a guy, Achilles, whose entire body had been dipped in it when he was but a babe − save for the famous heel of his foot, which ended up being his undoing. While his baptism is less intentional, Dante's bath has been much more thorough. Maybe it counts for something.

Turns out he needs it, the strength.

Eventually, their league of misfits and murderers indeed encounters a gateway. Once again, Dante gets the pleasure to note there is a door hanging in the air. With its lustrous finish and slick metal parts, it's very similar to the one they summoned back in the Argosaxian nooks of the netherworld. He thinks he smells hemlock hiding somewhere beneath the usual ozonic zing, though; for all he knows, the pattern of the surface could belong to hemlock wood too. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence to remember that making prisoners drink the poison of the herb is a fabled Greek execution method (or to look back to where the door took him last time. Better not to dwell on that). The panther goes first into the purple lights and the rest of them follow soon after.

As he steps through the gate, there is a screeching sound. A shackle, a hinge: the fabric of cosmic space is bending in a manner that's familiar. Dante… has heard this before.

The moment freezes and lingers, then goes on fast-forward to propel him to the other side.

A tiny little hurdle. 

So.

He's been lied to.

No, fuck everything, no. He won't play.

Dante turns back to the door out of instinct, but it's is already gone. He's trapped. The bird is speaking in the background but he hears nothing past his pulse exploding into a roar in his ears, the rush of blood deafening.

Please. He can't.

He swallows a hysterical laugh and thinks he understands why Vergil would want to drape the world in a veil. Nothingness is nothing compared to this purgatory.

Vergil's inferno, it seems, is also Dante's. Poetic.

Even the air smells cold and salty the way it used to, a wind that's colonizing his veins blowing from the open. Sea, cold stone, his own sweat. The upsetting aura, like the walls are gasping and breathing with him. The sense of being watched. Instead of a sword, he's pierced and dissected with a gaze that has too many eyes.

This is not the first time he finds himself back here, oh no. But usually, it's merely his nightmares that accompany him. They have the decency to let him go when they've toyed with him enough. This is - This is bad.

When Dante struggles to rein in his shell-shocked panic, Mallet tower stands under and around him like a skeleton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a weird ride. Chapter 19: any bets? No poetry for a while, that much is clear.
> 
> By the way, most of the myths bastardized here rely mostly on my memory and the way they've been told in the Metamorphoses by Ovidius, since I'm very lazy at reading Greek and Greek sources. In this chapter I'm using the Greek names of the characters, though, because they feel more natural in the context of this particular myth and the Styx lore (Ovidius' Erysicthon is just Erysicthon as well). 
> 
> There are, of course, depictions of Dante and Vergil/Virgil/Vergilius in Hell and at the Styx. La Barque de Dante by Eugène Delacroix or Gustave Doré's lovely illustrations for Divina Commedia come to mind first, but I'm sure there are others too. 
> 
> The extract the twins are translating here is from the Aeneid book six once again. The second poem is Horace 2,17 from the previous chapter. It's from a passage where there's some talk about the folly of mankind and how it rushes into new forms of angering the immortal gods. In other words, it's a poem about hubris :)  
“odi et amo” comes from Catullus 85, an old friend of this series, and the Blake is naturally “A Poison Tree”, also known as that one poem in DMC 5. 
> 
> (For convenience's sake, here's a translation for the Catullus that I did for part 1. It's a Dante poem for sure:
> 
> odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.  
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
> 
> I hate and I love. You, perhaps, inquire why I do so.  
I do not know. But I feel it happening and am crucified.)


	19. xix. A Voice of Iron

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To spare you the trouble of going through some thirteen hundred (!) words, here's a highly accurate summary of the chapter: Dante attends an enlightening group tour, witnesses a crime and perhaps even confronts some of his demons while Vergil's napping again. A lull before storm, then? Not exactly :D 
> 
> Happy 150 000, congrats on making it here and thank you for reading!

The storm outside is electrical, flinging javelins of light into darkness that is otherwise only lit by the moon at its richest stages. The baseline of the song he's trying to immerse himself into is broken by the rumble; he paces the floor and turns up the volume, the guitars wail to a crescendo with their canned voices, the sky roars. Recognizing he's a character in a cheap horror pulp zine does nothing to make the atmosphere less foreboding and quieter. All this static. Makes him crazy. He kicks the player, it won't go louder, talks to himself in circles. Lady has been gone for more than a week, she'd probably tell him if she didn't intend to come back, he's drunk but only superficially so, he hasn't had a job in ages. He's, in a word, feeling more uneasy than usual. While he doesn't associate thunder with the Angelo yet, his childhood fears still tell him he's being watched. He's too tense to scrape the paranoia off his back and too old to get properly spooked, so the bolts rock him when he spins around on his shitty chair, round and round and round in his limbo. The night won't end and he's living every second of it. Dizzy, painstakingly conscious. Something's got to give.

When the blitzkrieg finally comes to an end, the silence that follows resonates even more noisily. It pierces the antinoise in his office, this unrelenting reminder that rest is temporary and stress is forever, sitting heavy at the nape of his neck as he answers the phone and his prayers for a purpose go unanswered. Destiny, wearing sunglasses at an ungodly hour, catches up to him a moment later. He's ready, oh yes he is, even with his shoes propped on the table and his fingers reaching for a nonexistent smoke, taken to ease his nervousness.

This is the day. It seems so obvious once he realizes it. The first thought that flashes inside Dante's head when a stranger wearing his mother's skin enters _DMC_ with a bang and a snazzy motorcycle is a simple “So soon?”. It's a dull surprise, a thud somewhere behind his breastbone, hardly warranting the question mark. Longest decade of his life, but he did it − ten years have gone past, he has nothing to show for them. A success: the stasis in which he's preserved himself has been complete. As such he's been too crippled for the hunt, but it's alright, it seems that the predator has found him anyway. And all it took was a little patience! Undischarged, manic energy builds up under his skin. See − the gun has been fired, he theorizes, when he was born or the moment Sparda sealed away the demonic realm, surely it's merely a matter of when and in which form the bullet comes home. Dante has constructed himself a fate, negotiated with his doubts and sold them a storyline. Thank the stars that the prophecy turns out to be a self-fulfilling one. Today is the day.

When Trish spins her story and lays the clumsy snare in front of his face, the name _Mundus_ means nothing to him per se. _The world_, the Latin forged into his spine pipes up. How ambitious. As the front door paints his back pink-red, he can only count on the evil delivering the promises its titles have made.

_The world_. Also _clean_, _morally upright_, his dictionary tells him when he has indeed been wrecked by the wicked but, contrary to the plan, lived to tell the tale. He's playing with it several lifetimes into the new aftermath, hoping to find an explanation or an amnesty he doesn't believe in and sure as hell doesn't deserve. Got to make up another plot in order to survive till tomorrow. Therefore he reads. Licks his finger, turns the page, thinks of cleansing fire. Needs more. _The pit_. Sounds fitting, looking at it from the bottom, a million miles beneath bedrock. _The mankind_, _the world order_. _The universe_, both as in the heavenly bodies and the mundane at different points in history. Yeah. Later, in his defeat Mundus is everywhere. That way the devil succeeds too, doesn't it: by losing, it makes Dante wait and beg for its return. The soft spell he had between Temen-ni-gru and Mallet, the ability to mostly turn off his mind and go with the flow, is a paradise permanently lost. No, now he's eaten from the tree of Knowledge and can't unsee the face of god under the helmet. Murderer he can be, but − a Vergil that didn't die is a Vergil that suffered for a decade. No drink will dull that or wipe his hands clean. Nothing is created out of nothing, not even _the world_, thus there has to be an ending. It has to come and collect its win. He needs to believe this.

Mundus. nomen est omen, it's got to be. From the depths of despair to the high heavens, his influence is absolute: a childhood in flames, the long fall thereafter. Mundus is the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end, the spaces in between. Dante shoulders the meantime; his own name speaks for itself.

\--

It's windy at the top. After the long bouts of inertia, the air moving as a physical force is a shock to Dante's system, which is still having trouble with digesting the remains of the morass wallowing all over the place. Awesome − if he stays still in the bitter cold with his eyes closed, he won't have to acknowledge the latest visions the inferno has in store for him. He's played this game before. It usually ended in his brother dousing him in water to make him stop pretending, but he's asleep now, can't ruin it for him anymore.

“Get a hold of yourself, for crying out loud. If you're dead set on being this dramatic about everything, go home now, pretty please,” a creaky voice interrupts him. Fuck you too, friend. Dante rolls around his tongue that's sticky with dryness and several sizes too large, still anticipating to taste the swamp. Vergil manages to sabotage his “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” routine while unconscious, impressive.

“Kinda wish I had hands so I could slap some sense into you. Wings are generally the superior type of fin, but this calls for palms.”

He pinches his lids tighter out of spite. “Just give me a moment, will you?”

“No. It's your fault, nobody cares about your moping. We're not happy about this either and we sure as fuck won't be spending any longer here than we gotta. You with us or not?” the crow continues harshly. Dante sways on his legs. A coat, he's missing a proper coat. It's chilly without his leathers. Would you imagine, an unfamiliar sensation in such a familiar place. It's rather nice.

“Listen, I just --”

“You listen to me, buddy o pal. No one cares! Newsflash: you're not the center of the universe and your little struggles don't mean it owes you shit. Shut up and act like you care about anything else than your own feelings for a sec.”

Something about this hits a nerve. He's not denying the facts, which do happen to align with the rebuke. Does it have to be said like that, though?

“Hey, it's not that easy to, I don't know, instantly bounce back front the Styx fiasco, and this crap doesn't really help. I'm doing my best, cut me some slack,” he barks. Having such a short fuse won't help, but it's to be expected. It's the genes, man, he's notoriously programmed to handle things by giving them a good smack. In this case the tried and true method is impossible, so what is he to do? Deal with it like an actual human being? Fat chance.

God, they're off to such a great start. Already at each other's throats when it's been what, five minutes without adult supervision? Amazing. By the end of the day, will he get to pluck the chicken again? Why does that sound like a euphemism? Will their murder/suicide pact unravel before it gains a body count?

“_Fuck you!_” the bird snarls. His eyes snap open; the scene, unfortunately, remains unchanged. The ocean, the fallen bridge, the heavenly vault twisted in an ambiguous state of sunset and sunrise, what a wonderful welcome wagon. “I fucking died here, we all did! I was humiliated and defeated and killed, I hate this, I hate your unhelpful bitch-ass whining! But oh no, it must be so tough on you, goddamn. Here's an idea: how about you go fuck yourself if you can't get over yourself for one minute?”

Its raw anger punches Dante in the lungs. He risks a glance and meets the vulture visibly seething. To his surprise, it's passably scary looking when provoked. With all the sharp edges and nasty stares, its small build gets sidelined by a current of sheer unpredictability intensifying its rage − it used to explode into thunder, didn't it, it'd serve him well to remember that. Dante can almost feel the red wind singe him again; the atmosphere crackles and he suddenly recalls its last moments, the whole pathetic shebang. That, and the bull-headed fortitude that allowed it to disregard its decomposing physique for the sake of its duty. Just where has he run into such perseverance before? _Grant me one last surge of power, the power to finish him!_ Three lights laughing, lightning gnawing on bones, burned flesh reeking, ozone and fried grey matter leaking out in waves. _You have failed me. You are no longer worthy_.

_Useless scum_.

Ah. He actually feels a little bad. It's not like he would've ever thought about it on his own, but it'd add up if Mallet Island wasn't a happy safe place for this critter either. Mundus' rule is akin to waste disposal in its discretion. Geez.

If he's looking for positives, it's sort of comforting to know he isn't the only one affected by the past that's so dang present now. Dante sure is, affected. Never set foot on the rooftops or the zenith of this spire, so it's not his memory that's working overtime to produce him an image of the fallen angel standing tall at the site to observe the land beneath, heavy gauntlets resting on the pommel of the last sword to get the better of him. Looming at the heights and in the dark spots, a mute whisper. Got to turn it off − his, and he supposes their, balance is precarious enough as is.

“You seem pretty lively for a corpse,” he tries. Lighten the mood a little, make a goodwill gesture to show he's not interested in treading further into whatever this mess is. No hard feelings?

His attempt falls flat. The feathers ruffle up as if the crow is expanding with steam, ready to chew him out and spew pure vitriol at his face. Probably shouldn't have said that then.

“No, fuckwit, you've got no −,” it begins. It doesn't get far: the retort is cut off by the cat Dante has pretty much forgotten about by now. Quicksilver in its spine, it appears in the space between them from somewhere behind Dante, looks at its companion accusingly and growls in clear warning. Vergil's sleep is apparently big enough that he doesn't budge at the reverberations running through his carriage. Must a blessing.

“But it doesn't concern you one bit, does it,” the bird sighs, deflating instantly at the whiplash as though it's reduced to a meek lackey again. The close-mouthed caballero is the secret brains behind their operations? Color him surprised. “That's Vergil's business and not yours. Anyway, we're going in now. You do whatever.”

Dante decides to try and be the bigger person, as hard as it may be when neither of them is strictly speaking a person in the first place. “Lead the way.”

Apparently, there's a hatch under his feet. The changeling adapts its shape to something more human-like and takes Vergil down the ladders on its hind legs. Dante adapts to the situation by doing some lame breathing exercises, his human abstract about as convincing.

To your hell I'd like to welcome you, the sea whispers to him when he gives it a final glance. You don't say.

\--

As an avid fan of the classic Mallet Island chic, Dante is glad to note that the tower hasn't been undergoing any major renovations recently. Or so he guesses, his night-sight is glitching. Although the walls are still lined with lanterns and the lamps are lit, it's a little dark, as if every light's casting an additional shadow. Fucky, but what do you expect? Location's clear anyway. The top of The Stairs, above the bedroom he's spent countless nights in. The stone under his shoes is solid, the air is a correct mixture of mold-moist and stale; everything looks sharp and real down to the tiniest crack in the floor.

Dante is careful not to touch the walls or the rusty railing he approaches. Some safety measures ought to be taken after the river blunder. “We need to get down, right? Jumping's got to be the fastest approach,” he remarks, leaning towards the abyss to have his peek. Can't see to the bottom of the tower. Ugh, vertigo: thick fog is whirling like a hypnotic beam and filling the ditch with whiteness that sickens him less now that he's seen it turn black. From what he can tell, the stairs beneath them are daunting in their length and more intact than they were when he left actual Mallet behind. Well, yeah, he did blow them up, so the fact that there is a staircase is somewhat anachronistic in itself. But all the gaps in them are gone, perhaps removing the need to leap from one platform to another, pick up decorative swords and dash up and down the spire every five minutes, should they go by foot. Merely a long, long trek downwards. So looking forward to that.

“Wanna risk waking him up?” the bird answers, its tone bored.

He doesn't. They walk.

Well, some fly and others ride a tiger. Anyway.

Dante can take approximately one minute of the silence before cracking. Under the circumstances, he considers it a personal record. He'd much prefer snappy commentary to listening to the ambient sounds echoing around their footsteps, two pieces of metal hitting together rhythmically in the distance, under the surface. The cheery musical tune mixing into the hollow, dissonant melody is purely something his id has decided to supply him with out of generosity, he never heard it around these parts of the castle.

It's just… descending. And his nerves are still fucked and wobbling all over the place, even the sex-obsessed parts of him being weaker than the ones traumatized by the recent underwater show. No sordid daydreams to distract him when they'd for once be the lesser of two evils, damn it. Dante slows his steps down so that the panther can chart the course and he can keep an eye on Vergil's unconscious form. How nice of it to cover most of his body; now he doesn't have to look at it and see the torn ligaments and bared arteries the Styx engraved on his visual cortex. He can wander inside his own head instead and wonder if there really is a body there, under the purple-black mass, if it still comes with a spine and fleshed-out arms. Does Vergil even consider it his?

After a minute, he pushes his luck. What they're doing doesn't work for him and it's a problem for them if he freaks out. It's for their common benefit to give his psyche a tranquilizer − chatting about the weather it is. If his makeshift partner will take the bait, it's a testament to its unease too. Misery doth love company.

“Are we expecting a fight? I would have imagined we'd meet more resistance. Marionette guards, security systems, the works.”

“Nah. The King knows it's us, doubt he'll bother. Probably called his men off, even,” the bird says. It keeps forging ahead, then looks back and makes a sound, as if it's surprised to see Dante halting.

How's he expected to march on when he's been swept off his feet? “Mundus knows we're coming? What, how?”

“Vergil told him.” The reply is all but missing an audible “duh” tacked at the end.

“I don't − shit, why? When?” His dismay makes his words gain an aggressive note. It's pulling his leg, why would he, but, he doesn't follow. There's tactical oversight and then… this.

The ugly duckling makes an irritated noise. “Hey Shadow, wait up,” it yells at the cat that's eagerly pushing ahead, a true boy scout. It throws them a disappointed look but does as it's told with a remarkably judgmental scowl. Dante cares not.

“He told Mundus we're coming after him?”

“Don't shoot the messenger, I'm only calling it like I see it. You ogled dear leader when he fiddled with an altar, yeah? This is basic stuff, you anthropoid. D'ya honestly think the King would let any idiot enter his domain just like that, without any identification or nothing? Please.”

Trying to make some sense of this makes Dante regret he's neglected his demon studies. ID cards are handy for a reason, he doesn't get why the local practice has to be such an obscure affair. “You're mistaking me for an egghead. I don't do research on monsters, I slay them. But okay, that happened. Now what? If Mundus is aware of our plans, why isn't he trying to wipe us out as soon as possible?”

“For a demon hunter, you really don't know shit about u− them. Imagine a being that's thousands of years old and has won a buttload of wars. One day he's lounging on his sofa, a sexy incubus or two feeding him peeled grapes and doing some belly dancing, y'know the drill, when he hears some asshole has appeared in his backyard unannounced, claiming to be coming for his hide. The King is vain 'cause why wouldn't he be, he's beaten the best. No way this is gonna do him in, right, least of all on his home turf. Would look kinda bad to make a fuss over it, too. Besides, it's difficult to find a tougher son of a bitch than Nelo Angelo. He created it, you beat it, though let me tell ya, you really lucked out when it got so distracted. Point is, ain't many guards who could stop you guys. All in all, he thinks: why waste the effort and underlings?”

Dante huffs. Thanks for the vote of confidence or whatever. “It's a pretty solid point, that we're in his territory now. You know, Mundus may be right about our chances,” he points out as they set forth again. A cluster of beaks clicks noncommittally.

“Don't let boss hear you say that, he hates a quitter.”

“Wait, actually − can he hear me?”

“Why, you got something to confess?” the raven asks slyly.

“No, I'm making noise. Just answer the question.”

“Do we look like a bunch of rats to you, Red? I won't be snitching on him, so don't you even try any funny business. We're looking out for our interests here, which, before you say anything dumb, also include his.”

The chat noir rumbles approvingly. Their chat, such as it was, withers into muteness. Best to take the information in stride and brush off his personal opinions on their strategy. Done − it's relatively painless since it's been proven he knows next to nothing about it.

Ok. Now that Dante's alone with himself again, a shitty thing he's been trying to shrug off bites into him: the current configuration is infuriating and also a relief of sorts. It's easier to buy his own horseshit and pretend that he's satisfied with his brother being alive. He'd never ask for more, no. Him to talk, to reach out to him or to explain the “warning the enemy” issue, oh no. This is the most predictable Vergil's been in years as well. When he wakes, he will attack − the only ambiguity is his target.

Dante feels sad for himself, ogles his twin, feels sad for him and his new permafrown. Judging by the state of his clothes and mop, he seems to have dived after him into the marsh, so did he lose consciousness as soon as he hit the water or did he see the − everything? His lethargic figure doesn't answer. Shadow the cat turns to peer at Dante every once in a while, happy to keep the distance and clearly suspicious as heck. Even when it faces the road, he gets the feeling it's observing him no less keenly. Together with the entire building gawking inside him, he can't stand the scrutiny without something to soften it.

Next topic, a desensitizer, can't trip now. A question. Should be harmless. Mundus used to address his gryphon servant some way, right? The moniker escapes Dante because he didn't or doesn't care, but he's fairly sure there was such a thing. “Yo, Pidgeon, do you have a name? Feels weird to meet death by your side et cetera when I don't know it.”

“Been called Feather-face, among other things.”

“Aww, you remember? That was like, a lifetime ago.” The bird grumbles. “Seriously, though. You've called your friend here Shadow, but I'm missing you and the, uhm, small one.”

The orb, snuggled comfortably in the nest of the claws, blinks in purple when he cranes his neck to check it out. See? They all appear more or less sentient, so names would be a courtesy, yeah? Dante's trying to honor the manners his poor mother had tried to teach him.

Rumpelstiltskin seems to be opposed to etiquette, though. “Flock off.”

“Don't take it too personally, it wasn't my finest hour. Come on. Give me something to work with,” Dante pleads.

It occurs to him this isn't a wise move. Straight up asking for trouble when his guide is already pissed off at him − a sound plan. Accordingly, the Anonymous One keeps its quiet for a long minute and lets Dante stew in a mess of his own making. His shoes create echoes and it's highly unsettling how there's nothing abnormal about it, as if this is reality.

“I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” the birdie declares, unwilling to cooperate. Guess it isn't going to disembowel or abandon him, at least. Phew. It isn't pointing out how desperate Dante is to hang on to their underwhelming conversations either. He thinks they have a club now.

“That's a mouthful.”

No response.

“A nickname, even? You're killing me, Fluffy.”

A dry response. “Haven't you heard all those legends about demons and their true names?”

“Yes, but they're bullshit.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Still rude to ask.”

“As if you care about politeness.”

“I'm hurt. Also, not tellin' you shit. Real talk: can you say your actions have given us any reason to trust you? Wait, don't answer − I bet you can 'cause you're a liar and a cheat, but should you?” the mockingbird says.

Dissatisfied with their progress, Dante takes another quick gander over the railing. They've been at it for a while, but it's possible they're not even halfway down. Christ, he sure hopes this isn't a variation of Penrose steps. “I can't see what harm the info could even do. I promise I won't use it to suck Vergil's soul out or whatever you're so worried about.”

There's a dramatic pause, then a scandalized inhale. “Goodness gracious, you filthy heathen! That's just lewd. Don't make me think about boss having his whatever sucked, alright? Really, eww. It's like imagining a family member bonking − take it from me, not everybody wants to see that, or do the bonking themselves.”

Oof, that was a low blow. Dante sputters.

“What are the chances of you believing me if I say I have no idea what you're talking about?” he asks faintly once his diaphragm starts to function again, sounding strangled even to his own ears.

“Take a guess,” comes the reply.

“Got it.” Is this truly better than being tormented by silence? “Would you mind telling me how you jump to these conclusions? Because they're delusional and you're doing some world-class overreaching right there, obviously.”

The Stubbornly Nameless Entity refuses to play along. “Dunno if you've noticed it with your puny human senses an' all, but I've got more eyes than you, Red. You're a moron to think I don't see shit.”

“I don't see how −“

“I know everything,” it proclaims haughtily and ruffles its wings loudly enough to be heard.

Another peep into the chasm, still more road to cover. The “are we there yet” is a horse Dante can't beat any deader, so he must conduct his impatience into something else. “Alright, I'll run a test and let you show off a bit. What was my favorite color as a kid?”

“Blue,” the Almighty answers without hesitation. Damn. Dante kind of believes it already, because there's an obvious answer here and blue's not it. His affair with all things red only began in the aftermath of the fire. His former top pick became an unpleasant reminder; they had both loved the shade and fought over blue shirts and toys like the pair of gremlins they were. It lost its meaning when he could have it all to himself. Eva had asked him to get a new life and identity as well, hadn't she? Her preferred color had seemed an appropriate way to complete his transformation, as if Dante was keeping a part of her and his family alive by cloaking himself in it, which admittedly is counterproductive to the goal of becoming someone else entirely, but hey, his scarring is enough to tell anyone he's not an individual who lets go of hurtful stuff. Besides, red's much more sensible when you're in the habit of bathing in vital fluids, unless you're talking about demons. The you're shit out of luck in crimson, actually. Uhm. It's a fashion statement, let's leave it at that.

Earlier, the bird implied it's a part of Vergil's nous. What else would nobody but the sons of Sparda know? “Hmm. Say, when did I learn to ride a bicycle?”

“At three. Never stopped bragging about it 'cause Vergil did the same when he was six, did ya? Carted him around for those three years and didn't let him live a second of it down.”

That's a bingo too, bravo. For some reason, the animal glosses over the tidbit of six-year old Vergil deciding that biking was beneath him anyway. He'd still perch on the luggage carrier in his royal hauteur, wrap his arms around Dante and complain all the way to the beach or the orchard where they'd steal pears because someone was too picky to eat apples at home. Dante didn't quit needling him about the difference in ages, correct, but he didn't say a word about their arrangement continuing, how the both of them were willfully ignoring that this was now something big brother could be doing on his own. For once, their pretense was a sweet thing. Regardless of why the turkey isn't poking at it, Dante's thankful.

“Okay, one more. How did I react when Vergil told me he thought Mom's death was my fault?”

Hold on. Wait, what?

The film rewinds back into rain. _Vergil, decidedly not dead, calls him a disgrace. Dante, eighteen and hurt, lashes out. “I was happier with you dead − and now you just come back and think I'll wait with open arms for you to fuck up everything I've scraped together for myself in ten years? You didn't want to be a part of my life: stay the fuck away from it.”_

_Vergil tilts his head in faked thoughtfulness, his eyes harden. “Dante. I wonder if you will ever realize this is why Eva had to die. Everything has to be about you until you must take responsibility for it. It remains to be seen when it kills one of us.”_

The oracle is fully aware that he's blundered past his comfort zone, which is something that he really seems to love subjecting himself to since he just … keeps misspeaking and misstepping constantly. Dante would bet money it's smirking somewhere above him, sadistic bastard.

“Trick question, asshat. You didn't. Just stood there like a hunk of wood, really, a fuckin' two-by-four, allowed him to walk past you and then literally stab you in the back without a word. Happy with the level of details or want me to get into how you were basically --"

_He thinks he's gone until the sword punctures his chest from behind, an afterthought. It's redundant._

Dante interrupts before the what gets specified. Combusting with fury? Creaming his pants? Crying? Each of those is a truth.

“I'm fine, thanks. You won, you're boundlessly sapient and I should know better than to question you.”

“Good.”

A floor and 39 steps (that come in sets of 13 because of course they do) down, he pauses somewhere around the middle point of their descend. The bedroom door. What's an appropriate reaction here?

The chamber behind the wall isn't real. Then again, what is? Everything can be manufactured if you're skilled and crazy enough. “If you want a mother, I can create you one, as many as you want,” he's been told. In his weaker moments, Dante wonders if he would have made a deal with the devil, had he been promised a replica of another relative (yes). He tries to find solace in it: despite all appearances and all his power, Mundus might not be omniscient.

If the proposal had been to craft him an Angelo, he may have been tempted too. His senses say no, his actions tell a different story. It was one thing that he flirted with the killer doll. There's no denying he did, he spoke to it like he would to Vergil when drunk with his proximity. _This stinking hole was the last place that I thought I'd find anyone with some guts._ It came so close to defeating him; he grew restless, an undisclosed urgency rising in him. Desire − for death, for victory, for submission? _A man with guts and honor − I like that. _It's the same self-deprecating longing he'd express at Temen-ni-gru while trying to taint it with his bravado, make it appear less unsightly than the confession he dumped at Vergil's soaked feet and sneer (_I missed you_) a year earlier. _How about a kiss from your little brother? _They're the same. Displays of attraction, poorly concealed, representing the kind of pull he couldn't find anywhere else. He tries to. Dante pretends his banter with his regular foes is in any way similar and sometimes nearly succeeds. Goes to a bar with high hopes, has a vision of offering himself to someone and a meaningless surrender on his lips: “You can fuck me if you want.” Crawls into bed under the wrong lonesome influences. Back here, he's tired of lying.

He lies, but it's even not what dooms him. He's betrayed himself more thoroughly by other means. _He has no excuses − the knight is good, it jumps behind his back and gets the jump on him fair and square. Dante's bleeding inside his mouth when it grabs him by his hair (rough; it sings inside of him with a coppery voice), shoves him against the moss-covered wall and fastens its hold on him with a giant palm on his neck. The Alastor lies on the ground, Rebellion has been forgotten in the nooks of his mind; his hands reach for the blunt imitation of a wrist, but instead of survival they seek the bones they remember, as if they could pull them out if they could pull the hand away. His resistance is meek and there solely for his own selfish comfort. Dante is a tight bow − the tension building inside of him is a sword pinning him to the wet stone and he's dying so pleasantly, it hurts so good this time when Vergil's hate is ringing in his ears only distantly, no longer as fresh as his own wounds and the flood around them. La petite mort, first and last and always. The mask glows red, the oxygen colors the world blue when it flickers on and off. There is calmness in his agitation and this is why it's taken from him before whatever culmination he would reach first comes. He has later trouble distinguishing how much of the sensations are imaginary and later addition, because even if he does not experience every of them in the flesh, they are all true._

His body knew. About that he's certain. He's afraid his mind will one day tell him it did too. It already plagues him with the ifs. It wasn't necessary to destroy him. It could have gone differently, been worse, been better.

(He had a dream like that once, a nightmare. Better and worse. In the room, on the bed. The Angelo cleaving him in two with the corrupted sword, another appendage or both, one assault after another, simultaneously. There's nothing that isn't despicable about it, it's a fantasy built on old shame and an old flame. He's speaking of a single occasion because the exact number stops mattering after one time. This has to be seen in binary: have you or haven't you? Dante has.

He has imagined it. Vividly, in excruciating detail. It's so cold, stiff and unforgiving between the legs it spreads wide open to make room for its pelvis. He shivers; big hands, his thighs malleable under them. There is less violence in the touch than the way he yields, accepts, offers, begs, aches around the emptiness: what violates him is his own need to feel anything, anything at all. It's little better than an inanimate object when it pushes inside of him like it pushed him against the ruins, harsh skin and rigid, mechanical arousal, and still he perceives the way it thrusts past his walls as punishing, a weapon sheathing itself into an open wound. It doesn't, can't, understand him when the agony of the stretch and the mounting emotions make him scream and shake and moan for more, always more, as the pain takes him deep he's something other than hollow, disheveled and addicted to the feeling of not being completely alone inside of his own body, blood-slick and by swollen by friction. When he wakes up empty in his abrupt sweat, he's so humiliatingly turned on that he comes on his stomach instantly when his hand slips down to slide on his glans, before he manages to rut against the mattress pretending he's having an orgasm thinking of anything, anything else. Afterwards, he's both horrified sick, lonely and not the least bit surprised. Once, a thousand times. He has gotten off on it.)

_If he had surrendered in real life when he had the chance, would V_− − he's thinking about this dick in hand, often literally. It shows. He shouldn't, in any fashion. Why can't he keep Vergil out of his bed when he's never lain in it? Dante, supposedly, loves his brother. Funny, it never stops being funny.

“You coming or what?”

“Yeah.” Dante pats the surface and hears the wood answer in a faint thump. A parted memento; its call goes unanswered on his end. He's sorry, another time. Bye.

The bird doesn't ask. Fortunately, such tactile memories are experienced quickly. Dante sometimes wonders what an onlooker would see when he goes through them. A mouthbreather. A bad haircut falling over glassy eyes, fixed at nothing. His regular sullen expression. Or maybe he just looks constipated. Since he probably spent only a few moments at it, he's just couple of steps behind.

The bottom of the tower looks the way it always has. No place like home, is there? Under the lazy swirling fog, Dante spots the strange dial plate on the wall first, the one he had to thwack to make stuff happen. He's still unable to fully decipher the squiggly, vaguely Chinese-like markings running around its borders. His spellcraft is shoddy like always because he's never bothered to learn it properly, first because it was boring and then because it brought his deceased mentor too close. Using demonic energy in that manner requires a degree of concentration Dante's tortured goblin brain struggles with; he's under the impression all the magic circles and shit aren't strictly speaking necessary, they just easily channel the mojo the correct way. That applies when you're messing with your own spells, though, which isn't the case on the accursed island or this carbon copy of it. He's a guest, he's under the rules of his host, whoever it is currently. Hmm. On the ground in front of the plate, there's the elevator platform. Drab bluish-gray stone around it, pillars, metal on the gratings of the windows that lead to nowhere, no prize yet.

The opposite wall. In front of the lion-faced door that juiced the Melancholy Soul gizmo to take him to the sewers of the castle, there's a brand-new statue. Life-size, cut off at the waist, smells of rosewood. The woman immortalized in it bears familiar features too.

Trish, his hunch says promptly; the mouth is set in a playful line, the effigy mimicking her mischievousness that began to shine through once she learned to interact with people, something Dante never quite got the hang of himself. She's draped in the silky floral dress Eva had put behind lock and key, though. As feminine as she is in comparison to Lady the pragmatist, Trish'd never be caught in such a girly thing. Must be Mom then, with Trish's qualities pasted on her, but that's another can of worms. His perception of her is warped and incapable of producing her expressions, certainly − so Mundus is using it to some degree? Not good. His head hurts. His gaze sinks down on the contours and lingers on her clavicles for a bit. The gown brings them out unlike anything he'd ever seen on her: did she use to wear it to show them off to Father? Did he find them as attractive on her as Dante does on their son? Wow, there's an uncomfortable comparison. Dante, he reminds himself, you're no Legendary Dark Knight and Vergil isn't your Eva. Perhaps it's fortunate. How awkward would it be to ask his own parents for Vergil's hand in marriage?

Stalling again. Yanking his eyes back up, he concentrates on the cavity on her windpipe. It's round and overall very similar to the ones he encountered on his first Mallet excursion. This isn't rocket science. “We need a key,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. Hoping to get a clue that would contradict his expectations of its whereabouts _please_, he ogles the inscription on the pedestal. It's an artless engraving, the text in crude block letters. Neither Mother's cursive nor Trish's commercially attractive scrawl. Dante squints.

“AND IT BEARS THE FRUIT OF DECEIT,  
RUDDY AND SWEET TO EAT;  
AND THE RAVEN HIS NEST HAS MADE  
IN ITS THICKEST SHADE.”

It's a Blake, clearly. There goes the dream of a quick exit, he guesses.

He can't avoid it. The hunter, the hunted − whichever role he assumes, the pathways don't diverge and the storm will wash over him. What else would they be here for?

This time, Dante turns to his companions. They're as excited about the future as him if Shadow's tail dragging on the floor is anything to go by. “Is this Mundus not giving a damn about stopping us? Could've fooled me.”

“That was option one, mister dickweed, sir. Option two: he fancies some entertainment before shit hits the fan. You'll provide.”

“The key. It's in the bedroom, isn't it.”

“Seems so.” They both sound like they're summoning the energy to curse but come up short. Credit where it's due: that the general mood manages to become even more dejected is an accomplishment Mundus can take pride in. Death rows tend to be more chipper than their sorry little expedition, although it's not like his jealousy towards the inmates is anything new. They get a date and free food.

“Do you have any idea what we're about to confront there?” Dante asks as they begin their involuntary stairs workout. They pass the second leonine door soon enough − time flies when you're having anxiety.

“Nope.” The bird seems disturbed by it. “Do yourself a favor anyway. I'm asking too much, but I gotta say it: just stay focused and don't screw anything up again. That should do it.”

“I just wish Mundus had given you some instructions for crap like this when put you in his head, but that would be too convenient,” Dante notes in frustration. Since they're climbing at the same pace, he notices its glance at his face. Dante can't get a read on it, Vergil's pests are doing him proud in his absence. After a moment, it peels its eyes away and doesn't reply.

Their Via Crucis is suspiciously short, reaching Golgotha before any wacky mishaps happen. Dante greets the double gates with a solemn nod. They've got to stop meeting like this, he thinks as he's fumbling for the handle, then steps through full speed ahead, wants to get this done with already. A bandage ought to be ripped off swiftly.

The door opens. The door closes.

Naturally, the fucking door fucking disappears behind him in an instant, leaving him in the bedchamber alone, fuck. Beating his fists against the newly smoothened paneling, Dante's aware he has no right to be surprised about the turn of events. No one hears his yells or is yelling at him in turn; the cavalry isn't rushing in, he's all by himself, he's separated from the only soul for whom he'd ever tread here on his own accord. Even the background clamor has abandoned him. Godfuckingdamnit.

If he got his way, this would be when he transformed into anyone with some guts. He had them, spilled them out of his belly even, when he and Vergil traveled to Fortuna and got into trouble, but that was just because he couldn't see where things were going. Now, on the other hand −

His knuckles rappel against the panel. No. Magical thinking won't work. He is Dante, doesn't evolve. This is his curse.

The pathways don't diverge. There's no escaping it, so he gives in. So be it, so it must be.

Time to head for the mirror.

If you look at it right, it's shaped like an entrance to a cave. Can't shake the impression it holds the keys to becoming whole if he just outpaces the world for a beat, dives in and goes spelunking in its distorted depths, but he's not here for that today. Later. In some way or another, Dante will keep coming here until he shuffles off this mortal coil, hopefully not after that.

The frames remain unoccupied when Dante drags himself in front of them but within a distance. He waves. The limbs he's forcing to move obey his orders faultlessly − they merely don't make a single impression on the giant speculum. Somehow, it feels right. He's a no one. Odysseus. Nemo. He already lost himself in the looking glass ages ago. When it reflected his double at him that day, he did not see himself at the first glance. No. He saw Vergil, knew it was him on some primal level even when they should have been indistinguishable with the same outfits and hairstyles. It didn't last even a heartbeat, yet it was a moment.

It was instinctual to identify the twin as his twin. Just as instinctively he now knows what the shape emerging into the back of the hard canvas, first as a tiny black smudge, is.

He has come to expect it, has been waiting for it.

He should be afraid yet isn't, overtaken by a strange conviction.

Dante remembers his brother telling him a story about the hero Aeneas traveling to the underworld to speak with his late father, yes. But he also remembers Vergil's face when he shone the flashlight into the attic, the dark cupboard he had squeezed himself into, ending their game of hide and seek in his victory. Disappointment, determination. He could do better, lie low somewhere Dante would never find him without his help, make him search for him until his feet give out and his exhaustion wins. Vergil is good at concealing himself. But, in his turn Dante is stubborn and has seen this nook before.

The Angelo climbs through the surface slowly in its usual firm, unbending motions. It carries its presence as a thick mantel that suffocates Vergil's fluid grace. It's heavy, it's magnetic, it seeps everything in its surroundings into the vortex inside it until it's the only thing that exists anymore. Time flows like sluggish molasses; the Angelo cuts its way through their Red Sea with its leaden gait. Dante won't back down when it draws near and halts, two scarce steps separating their spaces. The sword rests by its side − a warning and a promise.

He looks it in the eye. Admittedly, it took him forever to figure out the vibes he got from Trish were a result of her artificial nature. To this day, he can't tell if he felt the same with the Angelo he met in person, his night terrors twist the original perception beyond recognition. Now, he does sense something pulsing at its core when it towers over him, but he knows what it is, this he can call by its name.

Maybe this is how he really wants Vergil. This is the only Vergil he could ever comprehend, after all: there is nothing to understand about the creature. There's no need to compartmentalize their different roles when they are clear-cut enemies that have both killed something in each other. Unconditional obedience dominates his convoluted motives and destructive desires, in the end bled out of him so effortlessly. This macabre, perverted echo of him is a Vergil Dante can and should hurt, one that he can exact his revenge on. He hates him bitterly when he wears these plates, which must be the right thing to do. The ease of simplicity.

If Dante could rewrite their stories any way he pleased, would this be what he'd meet in the outpour at eighteen? Looking past the changing appearances, has Vergil ever even been anything else? In his quest for Sparda's might, perhaps “Vergil” isn't true, a person that exists, just a black hole in a skeleton and pleasant disguises. Maybe this is what he himself wanted: to be a machine, not a man. Maybe this is Dante's true reflection, the twin image of him stripped bare. But the glass of the mirror has been empty for a long time and he can't breathe life into either of them.

“You're not real.” He speaks and reaches for the flashlight. The Aeneas in their bedtime fairytales descends, plays Don Quixote and tries in vain to battle immaterial wraiths that look like mythical beasts, meets the dead, his former lover Dido among them in the wake her suicide, leaves. The universe loves a good story.

“In the end, you are one of the shades in the book he liked to read to me, those of the monsters or the people who had passed away. Some died in war, some of old age, some for love.” Which is the Angelo to him, a monster or a dead beloved? Dido the shade died for love. Vergil's death was a result of his star-crossed love for power. A Carthaginian knife the queen drove in her own chest in desperation and loss, a blade lodged in his breast and eye socket, moved by someone else but driven there by his own choices. What is the difference, ultimately?

Who knows. Dante's certainty lies elsewhere. The Angelo doesn't respond when he addresses it, but he chooses to believe it hears him. In truth, it doesn't matter. It is a ghost of a ghost, nothing less, nothing more.

“You died because of me. You're dead; I killed you. You're not real.” The voice he doesn't control breaks into a whisper in midstream, but the quieter it turns, the more powerful it becomes. It pours out of him and he observes his own speech as an outsider, unknowing where it originates, blessedly detached from the complex emotions he's going through and is incapable of naming. They operate him like a mannequin, raise his confident hand towards the armor, sense it close its gaze. Its expression is frozen in place, wrought in metal, and maybe the stoniness should resonate with his inner image of his sibling. But as much as Vergil would like it to reach his marrow, had a hand in crafting it in a way, this stony visage is but a front and he's hiding beneath it with everything he sees as a weakness. This revenant − maybe it was a sanctuary he found by going through hell, but nothing can last. Daylight has invaded the hiding place.

The Angelo stands still. When Dante touches its jaw with his thumb, he wants to set the memory free, to give them the peace they've never found and got to keep. Sensory feedback dribbles to him slowly; he wakes inside his body when the rift between them has been closed, the chassis in front of his sweltering with a deep chill, remembers the roughness more than he feels it when he runs the finger along the curve to the pale markings on its chin with a calm valor at his core.

He leans his head closer to the helmet, the intimacy of his caress frost-bitten and remote, sensuality he's seen and forgotten in a dream that's lost in time, breathes the word against the iron face. He banishes the shadows.

What it all comes down to −

“Vergil.”

_Found you._

In a whiff of white dust, the figure vanishes in the headlights; Dante blinks once and the embodiment of his regret is gone, some final, persistent particles still floating above the ground before sinking into the small pile of salt at his feet like the rest of them. He can tell what it is due to a small amount of it ending up covering his lips in a pungent, stinging goodbye kiss. He feels weird about licking them clean.

It doesn't taste like a permanent farewell. Would he cry if it did, and for whom?

Anyway. He shakes himself back to earth, metaphorically speaking. That was… something, and now he's got to move forward.

The key. Where is it? There are no trinkets in the sand dune, he notes, kicking it and salting the ground just to make sure. This isn't over yet.

Looking around the room reveals that it hasn't changed since his last visit. The bust of the bronze woman stands with a drained mouth and chest next to the door, the carpet has all those fancy Persian patterns, the desks are crowded by books, bottles and cobwebs, wall décor consists of the sun and the paintings that hang crooked from the weight of dust. Oh look, here's the bed where his imaginary zombie fucked him from behind too, neat.

Have the curtains around it been drawn around it the whole time, though? Dante can't quite recall; the velvet is wine-colored and moth-eaten, is and was, but was it draped around the bed or did it hang there in shreds? Was it like this when he entered a moment ago? The canopy refuses to part from any answers it might have. Dante forces himself to briefly entertain the thought of the Angelo reclining on the mattress in a pin-up pose. If his knees quake when they bring him closer to the fresh horrors that await him, he has at least tried to diminish his apprehension. He pulls the blinds.

Terror number two is a Vergil too. Dante didn't expect anything else. His late teens − the slimness of the face is much softer than it would be if it had taken the countenance of him in his twenties, the ages that never got the opportunity to mold his features in reality. Somehow, the copy conveys the impression it isn't exactly dead, but it isn't breathing either when it lies on its back in its static slumber. He always escapes, into death, into an imitation of it. Closed eyes, Snow White asleep. The stark sheets he's tucked into blanch his complexion into sick ivory hues. Vergil in white again. Something old, new, borrowed, blue…

On impulse, Dante yanks the bedcover to his bony hips. On any other day, it would lead to him being distracted by the body he'd craved to touch with the kind of self-consuming hunger Vergil described to him on the ferry, now on display for him and gloriously naked. It bears the same basic shape Dante's did at nineteen but has less-defined muscles and a thinner disposition in general; his ribs stand out under the limpid and translucent pallor that make his nipples blush in a coral shade. Weird how the lack of sunlight is even more apparent than on teenaged Dante, who supposedly lived as a hermit in underground cellars. Illness is a tint always found in his sibling no matter how immaculate he seems otherwise − however determined he is to defeat the fragile in him −, sometimes eclipsed by his rose-cheeked smile and apparent only in the rings around his eyes, sometimes as blatant as cracks on fine china. Now, Mundus' handiwork doesn't manifest in the black fractures of yore. The overlay is intact like a fresh layer of snow from the marble-smooth forehead to the trail of silvery hair on his lower stomach, disappearing under the blanket. He _wants_, but −

Today, Dante's mind maps out these details and commits them to memory for later consumption, but most of his attention is drawn to the forest blooming under Vergil's skin. Three glowing, fist-sized lights have been scattered on, no, _in_ him, his throat, chest and midriff. While the delicate bark covering them is unblemished, the gleaming, fluorescent green gives it the bioluminescence of rotting trees and fungi, unnatural foxfire, a hint of corruption spreading under the surface.

Fuck. Putting two and two together, Dante gets down to his knees next to the idol and counts to ten. Then he gets up since the position is actually kind of bad for this, summons Rebellion and feigns stability. Why wouldn't Mundus make him extract the key from Vergil's bowels?

Rebellion runs into a wall when he tries to use it to mark a spot on the bust he's about to cut open with it. No matter how much pressure Dante puts into the thrusting, the blade refuses to even graze the skin, always grinding to halt a hair's breadth from the target − no amount of sweat, cursing or upset makes any difference. His consciousness fixates on the motions and masks their purpose into white noise. “Use your hands,” he hears himself saying at some point. Seems reasonable, his blank mind answers.

Dante is careful to disappear his devil arm first. Got to do it manually, otherwise it'll stick to its physical form. By the way things have been going, he's sure to stumble on it and behead himself after the deed if he leaves it lying around. Puff, it dematerializes, leaving his hands unoccupied. So that's done. Great. Time to − yeah.

After resting his palms on the temperatureless chest for a second, feeling the curves and dips of thinness expand under his fingerprints, his digits drill into flesh. They pry the ribs open quickly without care and ignore the bones going snap snap snap. Split the sternum, dig into the area behind it. Without thoughts, it isn't that bad. It's wet. Slippery. Tangible sensations, the bleed forming puddles on the bed. It's so easy to break him. But it isn't there, what he's looking for because it makes sense that it, of all things, would be the key. His heart. But he forgets. Heartless Vergil never has a heart, not today, oh shit here's the panic, the void in his breast fills with crimson liquid, he sees the glow but it escapes him, his hiccups cloud his vision. Dante's lashes are stuck somewhere somehow and he has to blink like mad to get them unstuck and clean his vision, to comprehend the shape of the light.

No pulse, yet the chest isn't completely barren. There's a globe in the spot where the missing organ would sit, too immaterial for him to pick up. When it's exposed, it shimmers in a brilliant glint and vanishes into a sound that slithers straight onto his eardrums to surround him with the noise. Dante hears −

**Dante?**

Far away, Vergil lets out a hoarse, tortured laugh that's interrupted by him coughing wetly. There's an echo of something, a gob of some coagulated substance, splashing against stone.

**_You mock me. What use would he be to you? He was never meant to be born. Had he not − if he had not stolen what was mine by right, if none of Sparda's blood was wasted on him, I would not be here, ineffectually tormented by a cowardly, desperate, unworthy scum, at best a mediocre demon who was single-handedly defeated by a lone dissenter along with his vast, worthless a-armies_ ** **\--**

His speech explodes into a wailing scream, high-pitched and endless as it bounces inside Dante's skull. It wears out eventually: the sad thing is that it's probably due to the energy of the globe running out, not the shouting itself dying down.

Dante's glad the TV's busted this time around. The program is gory enough with the sounds alone, he can do without the visuals. His hands twitch inside the thoracic cavity. Squick. Close around empty air.

Christ, Vergil. Dante's becoming numb to the evidence of his feelings for him, the loathing, the contempt, but he's still strong handed into thinking about it because the alternative is concentrating on the abuse, which manages to be even worse. It's just − the balls on him, fucking hell. Vergil's stupid, stupid audacity, his senseless bravery makes his eyes and chest hurt. Moments like these, he has to face so clearly how much and how dearly he loves him despite everything, and he's at a loss what to do with it other than clench his fist, bite his teeth and move on because he needs him to.

It's easy to continue on the path he's already carved. From one cavern to the next, the road leads to Vergil's abdomen. Running his nails down the soft, vulnerable skin, brushing the navel in passing, Dante extends the laceration all the way to the belly. Squishy tissue parts when it's forced to: the peritoneum ruptures when he rips it open to reveal a second bubble of lightning. It bursts as effortlessly as the stomach did.

This time, the globe contains nothing but Vergil screaming and screaming and screaming and sobbing in flashes. No elaborate taunts, only mindless pain erupting into unraveling words as their source is, without a doubt, downright butchered.

** _Do your worst!_ **

** _Try as you m-might, you will find I, I will not crawl -_ **

** _Thank you, I suppose I should be afraid now--_ **

** _Come on!_ **

** _You −_ **

** _D-disappointing!_ **

** _AaaaAAA--_ **

** _Never!_ **

** _You are mistaken, there is nothing I --_ **

** _Kill me!_ **

** _Ha−ah, is _** **this _the be−_**

**_Do it, do it, you cannot break me, you will - kill me and I'll, I'll_ ** **_die_ _l-l-laughing,_ _you −_**

** _Never, I won't, I will n-never --_ **

**D_\--_**

**Forgive_-_**

** _Kill me, kill me, killmekillme --_ **

** _Stop, I _ ** ** _can't _ ** ** _\--_ **

** _Please!_ **

** **

Then it gets really quiet. Dante, predictably, leans aside and throws up. He does it quickly and professionally out of habit, gagging through the most acute reactions and swearing he'll dwell on everything properly if he lives. It's inevitable that he'll think about it, what it means, try to unpack the impressions − memories? Not now. Put it off, feel some other time. Only one X on the map, he must carry on. Act like he cares about anything else than his own feelings for a second.

Gastric acid makes his gums sting as he hoists himself up and hauls his attention back to the worksite. It's covered in blood, splattered from head to toe in red, always red, but doesn't smell like it at all; he can't place the scent, fragrant, chemical-like and slightly reminiscent of ammonia, an old incense. He notices instinctually that the texture is different too, watery and slick instead of the full-bodied fluid Vergil's supposed to run on. Vergil, who is not here and is as for now alive. 

Do it to him for him. One more time.

He can do this, he has to. Dante brings his shaky hands to the neck, presses his fingertips against the glow, breathes. Will-o-the-wisp glimmers between his spread fingers − ignis fatuus, a fool's fire. Those who chase it believe in finding a treasure until they find themselves in the nadir of a bog hole. If Dante harvests the fen fire and stuffs it inside a jack-o-lantern, will his entry to Hell and Heaven both be denied, leaving him in a permanent in-between, condemned? Doesn't that describe him already? Is he running a fever again?

Can't linger: a bandage ought to be ripped off swiftly, otherwise it makes a mess, maybe even rips off the healthy tissue surrounding the wound. His nails sink in deep, the two lines of his hands mirroring each other vertically and meeting in the middle, stopping at something solid that bumps into them. He exhales. He inhales, exhales, pulls his hands into opposing directions and, at last, strikes gold.

Mundus, if this is his doing as could be presumed, has a sense of humor. Hysterical. Dante cackles in consternation: an Adam's apple. Of course. And it grew both day and night. Till it bore an apple bright. His life is a joke.

Where there should be knit bone, a protrusion of cartilage coiled around a larynx, dwells a sour-green fruit. If you ignore its location, there isn't anything remarkable about its appearance. It's got a shiny peel and a stalk and would probably taste tart like the apples in the manor's garden. The stem connects to a thick, purple-blue vein that bulges and pumps away as the only living thing inside the still-life, jumping when pinched. Dante nudges his hand under the fruit, cups it in his palm. Cross-sectioned, it would form a perfect circle.

Fruits and shades.

The color ripens into a mellow red when it's freed.

He plucks it out, the corpse twitches immediately. From the hole Dante tore in it, black ink begins to spurt out at high pressure. The cadaver's caving in from the top down as it drains out until no solids remain, soaks the bed in the scent of Vergil in the library sunlight and a halo of candles or Dante dipping the quill in the inkwell to conjure a world in calligraphy. It dyes his hair when the container is upended over his head: _you can't_ _write your name on _my_ things, Dante_.

Well, now he's able to place the smell. Dante spends a moment sitting on the ground and measuring the inky stain, thinking of a blank white canvas.

His hands, which in a way have written his name all over Vergil's life when they've mutilated it, begin to dry. It's a signal. Moving on. If he's learned anything − of course he hasn't truly done that, learned anything, why would he be here if he had −, it's that the rule of three always applies and misfortune comes in threes. Bring it on: he counts.

One.

Two.

Three.

So where is the third ghost of the Christmases and funerals past?

Having heard his invocation, it opens the door hidden behind the brass Sol. Dante turns around at the familiar creak of a hinge, faces another mirror.

The shade stops short and watches him wordlessly, blue eyes huge and liquid, afraid. Fear, similar to the one that filled the lake, forces Vergil's back to overextend, which still barely makes him as tall as the katana strapped behind it. Yamato looks intimidating on a grown-up, but when it's juxtaposed by a frame that's nearly as thin as its scabbard, the effect is somehow even stronger. It doesn't seem to be protecting its master from feeling threatened, though; Vergil trembles, looks every bit the child, nine-year old or so, that he is. Dante had figured he'd been on the lean side when he spent the first couple of years scouring the streets and eating genuine garbage. He was wrong: this kid is starved, his bones hollowed like a bird's. Breathe in his direction and he'll shatter.

As terrified as he is of him, Vergil tilts his shaking chin up, his mouth brave.

Then it quivers. It guts Dante, it's sudden and unlike anything his later, emotionally bankrupt iterations would allow and what is wrong, something is.

The child collapses into a crouch on the rug, covering his head with his hands and swinging to the rhythm of his shivers.

“Vergil?”

How to approach him? Vergil as an older child and a younger teen is someone Dante never got to meet. Eva had tried to introduce a healthy distance to their codependent diet, but it turns out that total separation has negated her efforts. Dante failed her; he's allowed the insidious, cancerous growth to overtake the affection that was formerly pure. If they had stayed together, would this be the only thing he felt when he looked at his twin as an adult? Tender sadness for what they've lost − growing up together and growing old in each other's lives, as siblings, nemeses, anything.

“I can't lose,” the boy whimpers in a small, teary voice.

A question. When has Dante truly seen Vergil's tears?

“Vergil? Brother? Are you − can you hear me? I'm Dante, can you tell who I am?”

An answer. He doesn't remember.

“Go away, you can't help me!”

“You don't know that yet. Got to let me know what's troubling you first. I will at least try.”

Vergil lifts his head. He hasn't been crying: his face is stone-dry and not even slightly ruddy. His lips bend downwards at the corners for a blink. Dante holds his breath.

After a while, the boy gets himself up and spreads his arms in a universal gesture, asking for a hug. Then he starts to creep closer, holds the pose.

“A hug? Yeah, I can do that, absolutely,” Dante says. His voice is uncertain as he stays frozen in some kind of trance, waiting. Vergil creeps closer.

Vergil creeps closer.

It hits him that it's a stupid idea, but it's too late to do anything about it.

It is, of course. A bad idea. Not for the reasons he expected, stupid nonetheless.

Vergil does not hug him. Vergil drops his arms and sneaks a hand to the apple, dodges Dante's lackluster reflex to snatch it back, darts into a run and with a big jump flies out of the window, a magpie with its shiny new treasure.

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.

Well then.

There's a storm outside. Dark clouds, lightning, full moon. Mundus sure is going all out on this, he marvels. Only rain missing.

Vergil is retreating, his back against the corner of the crumbling rampart. Clutching the McGuffin with one hand like a snake curling around its spoils, the thief brings Yamato between them to raise a wall. When a ray illuminates his face, his terror is feral.

Dante's throat closes painfully around his words. “Vergil. You hate apples.”

“You cannot come here! I will kill you if you get any closer,” the boy warns him. He's so afraid, yet his voice is steady as steel and twice as severe. He's gotten what he wanted from Dante and fooled him successfully, acting vulnerable is no longer of use. Soft deceitful wiles indeed.

This is going to break his heart, isn't it?

Dante makes an attempt to pacify the wild animal he's trying to box in. Aiming for a conciliatory tone, he addresses the kid as he walks towards him, nearer and nearer, following the rhythm of the thunder: “I don't know what's wrong, brother, but I'm sure we can make it better if you calm down a bit. How about I tell you a sto−“

Vergil snarls and cuts him. A lightning flashes in the metal.

It's bad, a good hit. Oh.

Yamato is an absurdly sharp, lethal instrument. Doesn't take a seasoned samurai to injure a foe with it. The bolt shooting through him when the katana slices his neck open is a wake-up call. Blood rushes out and bubbles into his mouth to tell him the kid really will slash his body to pieces if he doesn't stop him now. It hits him that it's the first time he's seriously tried to murder him out of his own will.

Vergil − puerile, frail, faced with a perceived enemy that could pulverize him with a pat on the head, out of his fucking mind with fear − will kill him.

_This isn't real._ Dante can take him down.

It hurts. Unpleasant sensory feedback is supposed to help him cling to life, not to stun him. But fear hurts too, and it tends to paralyze.

_You'll drown and kill him again. _Dante must take him down.

Another gash opens on him, now on his bicep. The child is less childish than him by overcoming his limits and demons to struggle on for a second longer. At this rate, Dante will drown inside his own lungs before his emotions manage to suffocate him.

Under the red splatters and white hair, Vergil's irises are blue. Hah − the apple of Dante's eyes. An explanation, suddenly. He hates him and fears him because he has the power to destroy him. He almost did. Can't let it happen now, no matter how much he too fears himself. Can't let Vergil's suffering be in vain. Got to use the shock, do whatever he has to because his failure means Vergil, the real one, the one that's waiting for him on the other side, won't make it. His eyes and cut nerves are boiling when his scraped knuckles rush past the danger to find a weak point.

Gurgling out something that's intelligible even to his senses, Dante strangles the narrow neck and feels as if the airways he's blocking are his own. Vergil kicks. Spits. Cries. He grows redder now, water streaming down his purple cheeks. And I waterd it in fears, Night and morning with my tears. Dante hates Mundus, he's merely hurting Mundus now, a mantra says on repeat. Hate him. Hurt him. The katana swings around wildly, no holds barred and no sign of Vergil the fencer in its movements, a lighting conductor in a high arc above them, the blade cuts the back of Dante's left hand open, nicks an ear, recoil slashes its master's side. More blood; the lingual bone makes a sound, crushing under the pressure, but it's not enough, he needs to make it quick and certain before he can say anything that'll stay behind to haunt him. Rebellion comes to him easily. Dante closes his eyes when it pierces a tiny chamber, its pulse clinging desperately to him like a hand reaching for his.

“I'm sorry,” he says or thinks he says, gritting the thought past his teeth to cover up Vergil's death gasps. The punctured body ripples with the last of them, then explodes. On the sky, electric discharge releases for one last time.

Heat hisses on Dante's skin. Scalding wax rains upon him from the candlewick he has smothered; blisters form where the droplets burn seals on his skin. He's too close, they have no time to cool down. As a result, he's christened with a cape of swelling, sloughing and thermal burns, most maybe third degree. They heal, first into parchment tainted by foxing and then to skin only marked by Yamato, before he can tell and it's not like it matters at all.

Among the tallowy remains, the fruit lies on the ground. Nothing happens when he grabs it. The rule of three.

In the morning sad I see;

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

It smells of beeswax.

Dante spends a series of seconds staring at the wall in ruins.

If he buries his face against it and shouts, just once from the bottom of his soul, no one has to know.

The twin doors have reappeared during his absence. They click open effortlessly and let him out as if them deserting him was a mere dream.

“Bout time. Still in one piece?” a familiar caw says its welcome.

“More or less.”

Vergil is, well Vergil's not fine being knocked out and possessed, but he is unchanged and unharmed and breathing on the back of the black lion, not literally hoisted by his own petards, fragmenting, shining or torn apart by Dante's grubby hands. The protective feline barrier won't let him closer, so he looks from afar and sees a man for whom he would plant pear trees. If Vergil only asked, he would build him a garden because it would still be worth everything. He hasn't, so Dante cultivates the soil by slashing and burning the existing vegetation to the ground instead, fields of coal and lifeless ash spreading out under his toes in every direction.

The sight of him puts things into proportion. His efforts aren't meaningless, he's really been relied on and waited for: the trio of guardians is leaning against the wall, on standby for his triumphant return. When Dante re-emerges from the den of nightmares, the spokesman is perching on the silent type's head and juggling the ball from one claw to another again in a way that'd be called a nervous tick in humanoids. It dawns on him that his defeat would likely mean theirs as well. He takes a look at himself to see the investment, the horse they've been forced to bet on, from their point of view. Must be less graphic than expected − in spite of being subjected to various messy substances, his clothes and extremities are stainless. At least the jagged pink line on his throat that's still healing tells more than a thousand words. Dante shrugs and tries to clear up the events a bit, nevertheless. Seems like the thing to do at this point in their relationship.

“I fought Vergil in a couple of his more popular forms, which sure was a doozy, haha. I may have stumbled upon some memories of his too, although that could've been me hallucinating, I dunno. Anyway, I've got what we need to open the door,” he says and presents them the apple, now sans the smears. Can't decide if it's heavy or light when it now weighs as much as the wax figurine did.

The bird watches him, giving the impression of either rising an eyebrow or shrugging. It's difficult to judge with the plumage and extra bits on its face. “You got a private show, lucky you, so can't tell ya what's what. Apparitions, you say? Could be the King playing his tricks, bidding you welcome. A heads-up, maybe: he won't be going easy on you two.”

It continues after a beat, its demeanor somewhat milder. “Or, you know, Vergil has a lot of free real estate in his head for that kind of thing. He's a pretty fucked up guy by now, if you haven't noticed.”

“Yeah, I've gathered that much. Whatever, it's not important. Let's do this.”

It's a lie. Of course it's important.

They make their way down with their mouths shut out of mutual understanding. If the plan was to launch Dante at the enemy in top condition, his newfound exhaustion has already ruined them. Really can't bring himself to give a shit about any of that anymore.

Nah, disregard that. The angle he's looking at it is wrong, the picture gets muddled. There must be an ocean of hatred that he's been bottling up day and night without being aware of it, lovingly watered and sunned. Explains how he's relatively level-headed about this being done to them. Dante makes a wish: in due course, he'll be able to condense every shred of emotion in him within a shell and throw it at Mundus, consequences be damned. For now, he saves his reactions for showdown and listens to the tinnitus inside his cranium until they get there.

Their party reaches the bottom of the tower in record time. “This is it?” he asks.

“If getting through the portal works without a hitch, aye. He'll be waiting for us in his seat. Don't say I didn't warn ya.”

The statue happily swallows the treat Dante feeds to it; Vergil must have gotten his aversion from Dad's side of the family tree. The sphere rattles down, slams against a pressure plate with a clunk. Letting out an audible click, the door swings open on its own and renders the knocker useless, the pedestal sinks inside the floor to give them some room to enter, yada yada. It's all very undramatic.

He lets the cat take the lead into the vista he's unsurprised to behold. This time, all of them make it to the other side before the gateway fades away.

Looksie − if it isn't yet another field of foggy milky whiteness. Taking a few steps into it, it seems that the mist is diluting gradually. They might be getting a real-world horizon at long last.

It's quiet; there's a wind, he thinks, but it's hesitating to move. There's a patch of soil under his feet, grass growing around the path, small rocks, the faintest trace of a blue sky settling on top of the scene. If he didn't know better, he could almost be persuaded that they've stumbled into a normal misty summer's day back on earth. Hell reveals itself only in the landscape staring back at him.

Having a bad feeling about the immediate future is something that happens a lot to him. Here, his initial dread soon feels like an understatement. He's wading through the veil with slow, careful movements, his guard up, his mind working in overdrive to place the impression mulling in his head.

It clicks.

Mm, honest surprise doesn't feel all that good at all.

“No way,” Dante manages to grunt, just for the sake of posterity. What astonishes him the most is the fact he didn't predict things panning out this way while all the roads have clearly been leading them to Rome. It's the natural order of things.

Makes sense. This would be Vergil's ninth circle of Hell, wouldn't it. This is where Mundus would be. From α to ω; where king Lucifer ignited a spark, there he will put out the embers.

He can try.

Dante can feel the anger now. Not as an emotion, a potential. It's not a righteous, life-giving energy but a blind destructive force that's rearing its possessive head against the threat and telling him a line has been crossed, that their past is theirs and Vergil is his. He is not, but Dante will tap into the reserve when the time comes; this is what his love is good for. It's been a long life. He's not prepared but he's ready.

From the entrails of the thinning clouds, a stone fence emerges in a funereal silence, crumbling away into nothingness. The proportions are off, stretched beyond their limits as if Dante were confronting them in the shoes of a small child.

He knows what he'll encounter behind the gate.

From the distance, he thinks he can make out the outline of a barren tree and a swing set hanging from its branches like a noose. He wonders − are the walls still standing in this visualization or have the flames weakened them, made them collapse under the burden of time? Only one way to find out. Bring it on, Mundus. Let's go.

Home sweet home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stand by my description. The numerous flashbacks and gore-ish stuff are surely to be expected by now.
> 
> Vergil is out, thus no poems for me to translate today. I'll leave this here, though: in Latin, you could translate “home sweet home” as “domus propria, domus optima” (“[your] own house, the best house”). I think Dante knows this, he just doesn't find it as cute as I (and Vergil) do. 
> 
> Chapter 20: Listen guys, I'm hyped.


	20. xx. Your Fall in Gold

_Strange and ironic that it will end the same way_, a not exactly wise humanoid said once in a place both far away and closer than skin. Seasoned, rather. Quite fitting now, surprisingly insightful for someone who gets ennobled without merit if he's referred to as a man. “Strange fate, isn't it,” to return there so soon and so late, too. Here.

Measuring the distance between that moment in the past and this one is difficult when time seems to be floating around him in the tendrils of mist that flee from his feet like mercury when he takes a halting step closer, then another. Having escaped on the other side of the gate, they gather towards sky to form a dome that obscures the time of the day. The passage stretches and shrinks. Quicksand in the hourglass. About a year, also ten years, now even more in this stride, a great leap forward. He's twenty-nine and forty in the same heartbeat. He's lived several lifetimes too many and none. A equals both A and non-A when all geometry becomes non-Euclidean. Nothing and everything.

_It will end the same way_.

Really. What else is there to say anymore? Dante's compass might have resigned after a couple of turns in the in-between realms, cardinal points levitate between magnetic poles that drift across the seas aimlessly, but he doesn't need organs kicking up a storm in a vault of solemn marble to see where they're headed today. Back on Mallet, he sensed it, the finish line screamed it at him, just a bit longer, he wanted it, was denied. Got the beginning of the end but not the final. Dante needs this.

_It will end_.

Good.

The torrent of memories that pours into his body at the sight of the courtyard he grew up playing in is surprisingly weak and distant. East or west, home is best. Yup, he kicks a rock and considers stashing his palms inside his pockets to become one of the personas he was as a teenager, this is where it all started and where the sorry alphabet will devour its last letters. If he ought to feel sentimental about these plateaus becoming first a battlefield and then a graveyard once again, he's past caring. Been there, done that. He has memories. He has, he's constantly bumping against them, they crowd him with unknown intentions and a heavy volume. There are so many − _on the roof, they watch the sunrise draw out a rare green flash, their expedition armed with an oil lamp and a picnic basket full of fruits and sweets and sensible sandwiches that neither of them touches when there's sugar to be had; his stomach lurches when he successfully makes the swing turn all the way around, then begins to flood with excitement (wait till he hears about this!); Eva stops breathing; a pair of roses blossoms on Vergil's cheeks when he inhales and pulls closer_ −, but none of them stand apart enough to rise up to the surface from the river they blend into, together they grow stronger as a whole but their individual pull weakens and his feet remain dry. Patience. It's too early, it'll happen later on. He's in shock. He's learned how to ignore them. He's beyond giving a damn, now. Whatever it is, it allows him to slog through the clouds with half-conscious movements, towards the manor whose outline begins to emerge in stark black lines that cut off abruptly before they get hold of heaven, bitten by the ancient blaze. Unfeeling, happily drunk.

Dante follows in Vergil's footsteps and the principles of his storytelling, the plot paving the road under his feet. in medias res, oui? Straight to the point, cut to the chase, dive into a legend someone else has spun for him. Dante takes the leap and the hand and follows.

A tragicomedy in the inferno needs a guide but Vergilius has joined Dante Alighieri in the stands, so what it is that leads them today? Running between his fingers, there's a stray sensation. It's building up and Dante reckons it could be significant. He gives it time; soon. Stuff tends to blow up at him if it's a big deal.

They reach the massive gate, deteriorating from the lack of care and details Dante's misremembering − didn't there use to be spikes on top of the fence, didn't they shred quite a few pairs of trousers and shirts on them. He looks around; it is still “them”, yes, a plural. The animals have merely fallen back to let him roam free at the helm. It's in the mood − something, something something. Tough to lay out. _Everything has to be about you_ and he thinks it _is_ about him. Say it ain't so. He has to…

The reach the massive gate, a guardian who's sleeping on the clock and would allow a herd of daimons to pass through the holes. It's funny because that's why the holes are there, because it happened already. Once, the proportions of the fenceposts used to be such that they'd be about twice his current height when accurately translated. They're taller. It could be unnerving. A dissonance planted in the family portrait, used to instill helplessness: see, he is but a child, stumbling over his own feet in his quest to exile the monster in the cellar when in reality the clamor is just coming from daddy's little torture dungeon or something. The metaphor does trip over its limbs that get too long and out of hand, whew, never mind. Point is, he's involving himself in a matter that involves adults only. He hasn't got a shot outside his element, which is nowhere, why is he here?

Dante laughs, probably only internally. The shoes on his feet are literally too small and he's grown out of the boyhood that was violently torn away from him as well. Maybe not for the better, but he's stopped expecting miracles; how could he be daunted by the impossible then? Eva won't open the lock for him, her welcomes woven into her embrace. She's dead, likely buried. Vergil, a child that has never known hunger and trims off the crusts of his toasts, won't climb over it to prove he can too, Dante. He's dead, murdered by his brother and grown up at the same time, his pulse asleep and alive. Thumping into Dante's bloodstream, it's a lifeline, a string of fate. The people he's failed won't come back unless they're made to, and if they are, what made them the individuals they were has been lost.

There's no lock, actually: the haunted house is free to enter. Had this kind of bullshit not worked on him before, Dante might feel insulted. The mansion is glamor, Mundus', Vergil's or even his, he points out to himself when he pushes the gate open and hears it creak, no ghouls pour out. It has only as much ammo as he gives it. He did live in a place like this. It's not here, he's not there when he hovers under the arch, ready to step through and enter the pomerium, not doing it because he's waiting. He's not who he was; while he used to favor blue, red is genuinely what he prefers these days even if it's due to conversion therapy. Hell, he's even become a decent poker player for a sucker who wears his heart on his sleeve and whose sole opponent in his formative years used to be too opposed to games of luck to be any good in them. There have been changes over the years, minute as they are, he's changed, he's not, ah, someone else (_start a new life_) but at least something else. Different, by no means better. More jaded, perpetually exhausted, sexually screwed up but not in a sexy manner, a knife in Trish and Lady's boots. Not exactly stronger since the past him had a belief he could rely on, could pull through anything as long as he held it as a truth and didn't dare to look closer. He won't now either, but −

The idea he's almost having -- a concept? He's getting there. Needs a little time, a… push.

Putting his current state of mind into words is proving difficult. He stands on the verge of entering the yard and wonders if he should try harder. Names and verbalizations hold power: it's as if he could fill the landscape with his voice and make it echo to his tone, capture the space, if only he were able to label it such-and-such. It's possible he's caught a bug whose fever hubris is going straight to his head to create an illusion of amygladas hard at work. He gets these vibes. Can't be held back. The present is less than real like a calm before a storm or its immobile eye, only the aftermath gets tactile. What will take him there?

To his right, there's the trail that leads the woods. Dante feels receptive to it; it'll do. When a memory finally comes to him, crystalline and distinctive, he's as calm as the tranquil landscape his imagination conjures up on the foreground of his mind, a constellation of snow and icicles hanging on trees that was pierced by their shouts and their sabers. Let it in.

January, February. They would be turning seven in the spring when they met an actual demon in the wild, their first. In retrospect, Dante finds it hard to believe that a hellspawn would stumble into their neighborhood forest by coincidence when a horde would ambush them roughly a year later. They never told Eva about the encounter, which still haunts him somewhat. She might have known what it meant and could have taken protective measures − she married a fool but Sparda didn't. But it's winter and they're oblivious.

Vergil is wiping the snow off his ice-bitten face with an aura that tells Dante he'll be trying to wipe the smirk off his mug very soon. He says something, years have blotted out what, throws a snowball at him and hits feet, when their scuffle gets interrupted by a wailing that'd pierce the eardrums of lesser beings. Instantly on guard, they trace the call into a clearing. It so happens that the caution is well warranted: the frost demon, missing half its tail and in poor condition in general, would pounce on Dante if Yamato wasn't fast enough to slash it away. He hardly feels the coldness of the ground broil his skin when he crashes down with the momentum. His breast is beating so frantically it hurts, but his excitement burns brighter and before he knows it, Rebellion's bulk is clashing against sharp claws. A practice dummy it's not. Amateurish and frightened as they are, a recently injured and inadequately regenerated shock trooper is nonetheless no match for Sparda-made steel. Forged to serve this very purpose, the sibling pieces convert nervousness into serious strikes and deal what turn out to be the killing blow together. It takes the creature by surprise as much as them, renders it unable to hail the reaper with a final shriek; the combined assault shatters it into glassy shards that glitter prettily when they lie on the snowbank. The death is sudden, the impact is still ringing in their arms, and thus it takes time for them to lay down the devil arms. In the meanwhile, the corpse has dissolved into a thin wisp of fresh smoke, its soul far too trivial to produce a mantelpiece memento.

The tension dissipates slowly along with the evidence. Sitting on the ground with his back against its twin and shaking from the adrenaline, Dante reacts belatedly. “Jackpot, he utters, then giggles at the line. Sick. So cool. Vergil turns to look at him, hot breath melting the snowflakes on his eyelashes. _What?_ “Remember that card game I tried to teach you like a month ago? You hated it 'cause you kept losing. I think, I think it's what people say when there's a surprise in it. Like, a very neat surprise, like when you win a lot of money against really good cards.” Vergil hmms, leans back and rests his head on Dante's shoulder. He's heavy and his shivers make Dante's skeleton tremble in echo, but closeness is calming. They sit, let their breathing return to its normal tempo and wait for time to start rolling again.

“Jackpot,” he repeats after him. The word mulls around inside his mouth and sounds neutral. Then Dante senses how the corners quirk up. Thick as thieves. That they'll keep this from Mom is agreed upon tacitly, sworn through swords. It seems as natural as the slaying that they'll come back to this moment (Remember what we used to say? _His mouth softens for a fraction of a second when it pronounces the reply that makes Temen-ni-gru turn upside down, or so it feels in his belly; foolishly, Dante thinks it could turn out okay when they are able to merge into each other, when Vergil's hand on Ebony and Rebellion spells out receptiveness, when it feels so good to be seamless and not alone, however fleeting their truce turns out to be. In hindsight, Vergil's nostalgia is likely reserved solely for the thrill of the kill._), and when “they” is vocabulary for the past, Dante keeps paying tribute to it anyway. Call it superstition if you must.

They've taken their first life together. If they make an encore for the last one, Dante can accept their death.

It's a weird feeling after being force-fed his worst traumas a moment ago. He feels weird overall, not what he anticipated. It's the first time remembering doesn't hurt since the fire. It is also the first time Dante feels like there's something inside him that he wants to unlock and explore. Amorphous as it is, he can't help thinking it's a path he ought to take.

Yes, this isn't real, what is real, it doesn't mean jack. Dante gets the impression these reruns would have crushed him before the most recent bouts of fratricide; Mallet is, after all, another name for a hammer. Meeting the Angelo face to face after so long was a catalyst. He subverted the plot. He thinks − he thinks he has only now accepted it as a part of Vergil, that it's something he's been skirting around. Dante wants to follow the path down the river to see where it takes him.

The first day without a tomorrow in his life and he's itching to spend it in the yesterday. Typical. Emboldened by his aplomb, Dante steps inside the broken circle of the wall, his partners in tow. Mundus' presence wicks through his capillaries colder than on the outside, besides that there isn't anything of interest. It appears Satan's become too complacent to march an army of dead Vergils to say hello to him or whatever.

“I have to do something. You know, alone. Can you stay here for a minute?” he says.

The bird squints when he turns to it. Procrastinating on the border seems to have been fine by it since it didn't interrupt him, so Dante isn't surprised to note his declaration is mostly met with a raised brow. Then again, both the stoicism and being okay with a little more time are kind of understandable when you take into account the fact that they've gathered today to disable the failsafe, which the pets are a part of. Facing death with dignity doesn't mean you've got to be in a hurry.

“Really should be asking some questions here, shouldn't I? Your track record blows, but then again, I try to make a point of not getting in the way of the crazies. Just − make it quick, Smoothskin, what the fuck ever 'this' is. I don't wanna know,” the raven replies. From the sidelines, grumpy cat lets out a sigh. It's not every day that you get to see animals embody moods as relatable as “I regret every decision I've made which has led up to this particular moment of my existence”; aww, he'd try to cheer it up and pet it if he didn't wager it'd cost him the hand. While he appreciates the novelty of the thing, there's no need to tell him this makes no sense. The odds sure ain't great: hoping that he won't fudge something of this magnitude is akin to hoping he'll stop sabotaging himself at every possible stage in his everyday life. It's a reasonable enough expectation, but it's never gonna be in the cards.

He sets off. His direction is arbitrary; to the right, walk around the empty space in the front yard and watch the fog disappear bit by bit. There was a patio here during summers. They ate ice cream. Eva wore a big hat to block the sun. The third circle he treads on the lawn urges him to change his course − it's not working out, these recollections are idle. To the right, towards the swing.

The noose around his mind gets a little tighter; getting warmer. Even though his twin kept him company often enough and could be goaded into petty competitions, swinging was a Dante hobby. Many days used up at this location. The set's looking rough. Seats have vanished, most of the chains too, No, not metal, he remembers the rope burns, does he? the bench is decaying, the fence is turning into a pile of boards. The most obvious sign pointing out this was a playground: the depressions on the ground, naked sand.

It cushions his landing somewhat after messing up a trick he eventually succeeds in. Vergil patches him up with confident fingers and an uneasy expression. He works quietly; pulls Dante's shoulder back into place with a loud popping crack; holds his knee high still to stop the bleeding on the leg; runs his soothing hands on the angry blue bruises until they disappear under his skin, the touch both painful and comforting. When he speaks, he's equally quiet. “I do not like it when you get yourself hurt like this,” he tells the shin between his palms.

Dante wipes his nose on the back of his hand. His jaw makes a nasty sound when he opens his mouth and his teeth hurt, but he's good as new in five, tops. “You've gotten me into worse shape, Verge. Would be boring to play with you if you didn't.”

The hands let him go, Vergil's hair keeps hanging low and covering his eyes. He sounds like he's staring into nothing and speaking to himself. Every now and then, he takes a plunge inside his own head, seemingly forgetting Dante's there, with him. “I am supposed to be the only one to beat and hurt you. Try not to do it.” Dante hates hates hates it when he does this, so he makes him snap out of it by running off and yelling how he'll climb the tallest tree in the forest and do the backflip from there. They have to clean his clothes anyway, so it doesn't matter when Vergil tackles him and they trade blows in the dirt for the next hour or so.

No, that one was better but still doesn't do it. Vergil's greedy sadism is an old hat. A push.

Next? A trip down the lake? Don't feel like it. The side yard then, why not.

Oh.

Even if it's a dream Mundus has crafted, it would feel wrong not to. He_ has_ to make sure −

The cross is still there.

Shovel in hand, under the only oak growing in their estate, he tried to console himself with Vergil's stories, how oak was often a strong protector in them both in armor and votives. It was a young tree, a seedling really, they kept waiting for it to produce its first crop of acorns, inedible as they would've been. It blooms in May, just like them, and when it's mature, she told them once, it's already autumn. Just like the tree, he was immature when he confronted the summer alone. Harvest time had him scavenging and wondering if he would've eaten the nuts regardless. Not even a stump remains now, yet Dante feels the shadows of the branches on him in its shade.

Her grave.

Found a couple of iron bars in the wreckage, put them together with three nails. Couldn't remember what the objects had been in their past life. The digging. Slept under the bush until the cinder had cooled down to temperatures a half-demon could handle, fitful rest, nightmares, gritting teeth. A lonely duty. Excavate the remains. Buried her in the clothes she died in but got the fancy dress to wrap her coals in it, the silky fabric covered in flowers, blood and the smell of smoke; carrying her from the ashes to ashes as easily as she had carried him. The digging, six feet. He counted them with his body as he stood at the bottom, sweat beading on his back in the harsh sun as the pit grew under his feet. It looked so shallow on the surface, and yet she was so far away when she lay in it. Wished he could curl next to her and let the soil pull him into the same sleep. Maybe next year, she'd get her acorns.

Eventually, Dante did read the newspapers (anything, any sign of him being alive against all odds). There never was an obituary for any of them. Just an austere description, the beginning of a press story that never went anywhere: _Police reported that the corpse of a woman was discovered in the charred remains of a residence that had gone up in flames on the night of the incident._ They found her, dug her up and took her away from home, but he never found out where they put her, what her new resting place looks like, if it has a tombstone and a name, even Jane Doe. He became the sole keeper of her identity. There's an obligation to remember, sometimes.

Eva had liked to sit here with a book and occasionally a flask; it was a good vantage point to the swings and had a view to the orchard and the garden she tended as well. It's obvious the apples trees have suffered the same fate than the beech, Dante sees the barren soil before he walks on it. It's the flowers that summon him. Red as ever in the middle of the emptiness. Roses, roses, roses, roses, pushing up towards the whiteness with her quietly tenacious nature, undying. In the middle of their sea is where Vergil kissed him on their eighth birthday, when it didn't mean more than what it was, merely a juvenile imitation of the first kiss Dante never got to experience.

He's always lying. Already at eight, they understood they were a separate entity from anything else and knew that the gesture meant, maybe they even meant with it, something that Mom would not approve of. Vergil was flustered and tense without fully comprehending why, the hand in his tight. Perhaps it was a seal on a promise; _we will always stick together, two against the world_. He nodded to accept Dante's wish, exhaled, was his: “You will keep this secret for me, right Vergil?” Then they went biking, forgot about it and Dante believed they'd keep playing house forever until he forgot the innocent beginnings of his feelings. In the garden, they weren't an original sin.

Years later, in a nameless month and surrounded by the scent that doesn't smell right anywhere else, he would like to know, to be certain of what it was that Vergil promised him on that day. It's unclear enough what Dante's side of the bargain has been − that he'll be awaiting, no matter what? It's the only thing he's ever been reliable in, in every other aspect he's betrayed Eva and him time and time again. Dante's love has never been loyal as it seems to want them dead. But it runs deep. If Vergil had him, he would be his slave, content with the scraps he'd throw at his way in pity and disgust. His supposed morals and humans do not belong to him and he doesn't belong but could. For some reason, even when he utilizes every other ace he has, Vergil's never used it, thus lending credence to the theory he'd simply leave him when he'd realize just how unconditional it is.

Dante wants to ask the bird. Does he remember, does he regret it, does he consider it a mistake, does it hold any significance to him at all, has he made promises to someone else, who has he shared his actual first time with, where do his tastes swim because they can't run as close to home as his, if he's ever desired, what he sounds like, does he remember. If they're in his purgatory, does it mean he's visited the site? But this isn't about him, no matter how much Dante hates him, is disappointed in him, feels cheated. His brother stole the future he thought he was owed from him, and even if the notion was false, the result is that he's been stolen a future, all futures. Vergil knew it would happen to him and he let it happen. It's all in Dante, the venom, it's not simple like he wants it to be. Protecting is always selfish because it implies the subject is something you're willing to keep.

There's another thread of a feeling. It's leaking from the reservoir, stored potential for anger. The same sort of thing he went through in the previous area, though more acute and hurtful: it will burn his hands for sure and he's alright with it, no longer the tagger-along he started this mission as. There are crossed lines and then there is outright desecration; by increments, it's becoming more than war. A place where so much has been buried is sacred ground. It's private. To have Mundus intrude as an active voyeur, that he could be pitting his best and worst memories against him − Dante feels violated, and he's tried to erase his emotions long enough. Feed them more gasoline and embrace them. He wants revenge. For Vergil and them, always, of course, naturally, this is what the river and Mallet showed him. But it's now apparent that he wants it purely for himself as well. To be greedy about it.

Dante is a monster, it's been established and today it's the best he can be. Vengeance is good.

“Fight for your life” is such a silly sentiment anyway. Vengeance is better when it smells this sweet.

When he reaches the footpath again, the animals camping near the entrance of the house are blatantly more nervous than him. Turntables turning, nice − he's warming up to the idea of Zen gardens and aromatherapy. While he can predict things are about to go wrong, he has no clue how. As far as he's aware, the plan is to snuff Mundus out because of the failsafe and because he needs to be eradicated anyhow, but his sibling is also withholding crucial info since to him, “words” is at best a common misspelling of “sword”. Vergil will do what he feels he must, no matter how little sense it makes to anyone else. Dante must adapt to that. Durans.

“Find what you were looking for?” says the dead bird flying. Honestly, “I found out I want Mundus dead, actually” kind of sounds idiotic even by his standards.

“Mm, 'm not sure.”

His companion groans. Someone's yet to learn asking him questions benefits no one. “Anyway, you good to go now?”

“We'll see.”

“This sucks,” it proclaims. Difficult to disagree. Dante watches as it ducks down from the skies to perch on the cat's head, making preparations for the next stage. He's not allowed to comment on its methods because it's not like he's been dealing with Vergil's affliction any more elegantly, so whatever mental water bucket it'll use will do.

“Hey Pidgeon, do you have a name?” he asks on impulse.

The bird ignores the bonding chance it's given in favor of being an asshole. “I dunno, jerkoff. Ask me again when we're sipping rum in Elysium and I might sing a different song.”

Prick. sit tibi terra levis, κούφα σοι χθὼν ἐπάνωθε πέσοι, may the earth rest lightly on your corpse, buddy.

“Alright, it's crunch time! Y'know the routine: I'll poke bossman a bit, we disappear and he's in fight mode, royally pissed off and ready to rumble. If I've got this right, he'll be gunning for the big game straight off the bat and ignoring any small-timers around. If I don't, it really sucks being you. Nice knowing ya, Red, break a leg that's not yours or his. Godspeed.”

“Adieu, I guess” he mumbles his warm goodbyes, takes a cautious step back. It's first light, time for the cockerel and the alarm clock to shine.

Wake up, Verge.

Feather-face stills in concentration. Some sort of prodding is going on at the brainstem level; Vergil's frown liquifies as his mouth slackens. A flock of finer lines gathers around his eyes and brows, as if he's focusing his gaze on something under his lids, he twitches, body snapping in waves from the toes to the neck, his lips fly open in a silent scream and his eyes follow suit a fraction of a second later. As usual, his pupils have begun to ooze into his irises and sclera in thick lines that close the gaps in no time, from coloboma to wide tar pits.

Dante blinks. Then the familiars are already gone and Vergil is on his feet, such excellent reflexes; what he doesn't miss, however, is the final transformation, never mind that there's not a lot to see when it's so fast. The transition from Vergil into Vergil with a tail and a flaming samurai kabuto for a head is smooth as hell, far more effortless than Dante's clumsy fingers pulling his regular devil trigger. Unfortunately − or fortunately, if you consider the time he could waste on swooning otherwise −, he still doesn't get a good look at the goods. Vergil doesn't spare him a glance. Cross your fingers and hope the bird isn't watching: as it predicted, he's proceeded to the doorstep and closed the door behind him so forcefully that it slams against Dante's face from the distance before he can get worried about being maimed by him or locating the spare key. The walls obstruct any sounds that might follow.

There's that. It could've gone worse.

The worst that could happen has occurred several times, no reason for him to delay either.

The handle doesn't scorch Dante's skin off even if its metal parts hold a memory of an old heat. Raking his recollections, he suspects the front of the building he's about to enter now is far more intact than the one he walked away from with the clothes and Rebellion on his back and the odd amulet boring a hole in his chest. Should the fiction hold a purpose, he's sure to find out sooner than later. It's been decades, he's still too short to reach the knocker properly. From below, it looks like the serpent depicted in the copper is smirking: welcome, the figurative snake in the paradise is pleased to be meeting you soon. Dante pulls the knob. Goes home.

It's… dark.

You know this hall from your memories.

**Ah, but that's where you're wrong again. Pitiful, but it is to be expected; like the worthless scum you are, you have made several foolish mistakes. Let us go through them so you can do better.**

**The room around you is indeed a hall. Very good − grasping the obvious is something you often struggle with, after all. What makes it a corridor? Have a look. **

**You stand on a large rectangular entrance mat. Its surface has ornamental ringlets swirling into repeating patterns, seemingly chaotic in their strict regularity. It is of Persian origin: you do not understand this, you do not know what Persia or originating from somewhere is. In fact, you do not know what a carpet is either, but we will get back to that − this must be first simplified in plenty of ways, generously, so we shall say you perceive such an object lying under your feet for now, just for your sake. Its color is beige, but everything in your surroundings is always crimson. In the rug, it seems relatively light next to the deep, nearly black red of your footwear. Behind it, there's the front door with its double gates, made of dark wood and firmly closed. Its defendors are a pair of statues, a mahogany tree that reaches towards the ceiling and a metallic knight in full armor, wielding a spear. They were there when you entered, let's say you saw them. Every texture has been charred to varying degrees. Look around then.**

**On your left, there is a cupboard. The contents do not matter, neither does the tapestry hanging above it. In front, there's a stone arch consisting of two heavy piers and a stone entablature, a thick curtain hanging in the middle. What does matter is that it forms a gateway to yet another room. In due time.**

**So, there are many things we can conclude from this information. Clearly, it's a vestibule, but is it familiar? **

**Your senses are sharp but you're** **a dull weapon. Here, an illustration. There's** **a painting on the wall to the right, closer to the curtain than to the front door. It portrays a group of characters, each of them pathetically human. A severe male in cold hues, a brighter female, two spawns nestled in a single cradle, infants. Husband, wife, children. A family. Familiar?**

**You do not need these words. Some words may be useful even if your capacity to comprehend them is limited. There are other ways to make you understand what you must. But these?**

** _Praise to my father, _ **

** _Blessed by the water._ **

**This means nothing to you.**

** _Your memories?_ ** ** No. There lies your first mistake. You do not remember. There are no memories for you to gorge yourself on. Time for you is a constant movement; no past, no future. When you don't remember, there is no need for you to forget. In that regard, you are inferior to most. It is a kindness.**

**Familiarity. Your family −**

**You? Have a family? No, not you. Every other thing comes from something and goes somewhere, but you lack both ancestry and a grave. You were born out of nothing and will return to the void once you have outlived whatever scanty usefulness your vessels may lend themselves to. You can be recreated and dissolved as many times as one pleases, you can be multiplied into numerous instruments and smelted into one, and yet you have no peers, you are always alone and on borrowed time. You have always been alone. There's** **a family on the wall, but that's immaterial. Lives begun and ended here; for someone, a person, that might mean something. _You_ do not have a life or any ties to this place.**

**See − this feels like nothing. You are here and feel nothing. This space evokes no responses because there is nothing for you to remember. Your present is your past and your future. How would you even react if you could? You have no needs and history cannot hurt you, so why would you have emotions? Your insatiable hunger for heights you could never achieve − there never was such a thing. You were always a shade, following a marching pace like a mannequin on strings. You didn't know better. Now, you have been granted a blessing. Leave the doorframe, dance a little dance.**

**You walk towards the curtain. You're** **slow because your plates are too heavy to contain the emptiness ballooning inside them. You do not hear how your greaves knell against the floor; you sense the echo, not as a sensation but sonar feedback. Were you able to hear the silence within, it would deafen you. Your senses truly are sharp and your reactions in fight are second to none, but you're a still dull, lifeless blade that someone competent happens to wield with care. Therefore, these are not your strengths. With long limbs, crossing the distance to the arch doesn't take many steps. You pull to a halt. You do not know what happens next, just like you cannot remember what transpired a second before you went still.**

**You _know_ this hall? Your second mistake.**

**You do not know. This is a simple truth. You have no knowledge, the insignificant little false god “you” prized so highly. In this respect, nothing has ever changed. You know nothing, knew and never shall. You follow orders − the ability to carry them out is the only quality required of you. You**'**ve been molded to suit them, no more.**

**There is a mirror on the wall next to the cabinet and in it, a reflection. It's dark but your eye sockets host a pair of twin lights, their borrowed hue red. See for yourself. You, yourself, have no eyes. Like the moon, you're only capable of reflecting foreign light and incapable of emitting your own. It has been this way always.**

**It's dark, but the red illuminates the features inside the frames. They are as new to you as anything else. You see the sharp black jaw, lighter veins traversing across the horns and the plates punctured by spikes, the rough imperfection of the surface. Is it skin or a helmet? You decide. Every answer is wrong. The third mistake. Let's talk about _you_.**

**This is not you, where you reside. It is, perhaps, where something akin to such a thing used to dwell, but it has been disposed of and repurposed into a thing that lacks value in itself, independently, as well, but has at least proved out to be entertaining. Instrumental value, if you will. **

**Your name −**

**You have no name.**

**You have no self.**

**There is no you, Nelo. All of this is me speaking into the wind, mocking your mother's bones that I ground into dust a long time ago. You led a life of vengeance, a passive test that you failed. Why? Denial. You are and were inferior, incapable of becoming a man or a devil; now it's merely put on display in an honest form. You knew it to be true when your reason told it to you, didn't you: **no matter how hard you try, you're never gonna be like Father.** If you had to be killed to truly comprehend what it means, who else can you blame but yourself? But that's in the past now, you've found peace in the full splendor of your ignorance. You do not exist and cannot understand a word being said. You are welcome. **

**This is true. Without a brain, any conscious mechanisms to process the external stimulus, the body acknowledges this as a truth, a feature of its tangible reality along with the floor and the walls and the carpet, the commands malleated into its spine. They are things that exist in this blink between a string of moments, and if they exist in the next, that's another truth and another concrete reality, in no way connected to the one preceding it. Nothing links one chain to the next; what remains are the shackles. The body is confined to the now. In it, it is constantly bursting with the pressure of the void growing in its bowels, falling apart at the seams of the armor that has grown into its flesh, but it's a cold feeling, it's a shapeless chrysalis that bears no life inside. It is and it is not, a distorted being vibrating asunder on the brink of oblivion but just outside of its reach. The body gains a face only when there are foreign hands on the surface of the mask, the membranes beneath it, sculpting it features that the emptiness swallows once their weight leaves it in its nebulous solitude. There are worlds and realities outside of it, but it knows nothing about them, cannot be touched by their shadows. This is light. **

**It has no pride. It has no memories of pride being the only thing keeping a flame alive, the only thing a small desperate animal has along its mistakes. It makes no mistakes, it doesn't think, it has rules. This is the way it is meant to be. It will kneel. It will bow and it will bend. It will crawl. It is daily defeated and humiliated into absolute dishonor, but it has no concept of this, and that's the biggest taunt of it all. When slain, maimed and pacified, not even this is significant.**

**There is no reason for its existence or the lack of it. The greatest of ironies, the deepest wound. The light has cleansed the unworthy and made it barren of everything that once made up its core. This is enlightenment. Magnificent, isn't it? **

** _Hail to a father divine, _ **

** _To his son the light will shine._**

**Do you understand now?**

**This is what he wanted, you know. Hah. This statement could be true. Or then, I am in turn giving you what **_you _**need to hear, as this is what** _you_ **so despairingly want** **to believe. You cannot face the alternative, you prefer the fairytale where he wasn't conscious for all those years under my thumb, screaming and crying under the mask** **through every excruciating second, saw it all, his total degradation.** **I brought him there thanks to you. You cannot bear the thought he was there when you betrayed him, that it was him you killed with your own two hands, that he could have grown himself a heart inside his iron shell.** **That he could have feelings.** **You cannot lie to me, so let us speak plainly. The choice is now yours and your options are twofold. I would like to repay you. I can give you the absolution you crave, I could even create you a universe where you have him in any depraved way you please, if you keep your eyes closed and let your suffering be washed away by the luminosity of my voice. If you'd rather continue your useless resistance for a moment longer, by all means proceed. We both know what will happen if you do so, what you shall witness, what you always do to him. The choice is yours, **Dante…

The fabric of the curtains is heavy and covered in ash when his hands grab it to pry them open. He'll have to get more coordinated than this to achieve that, though. The motions raise a dust cloud; it gets into his hair, the dirt, and several cavities, probably. They're his hands, he opens his eyes as himself to find them fumbling for the black cloth in front of him, Dante has hands. No gauntlets weighing upon them so that they carry out the will of the puppeteer, there's grit under his fingernails, his lungs are hawking to push out the soot he's inhaled by accident. Physical feedback. Ultrasounds are gone. Thank god, he's not a bat, he's not.

Nelo.

A deep breath. He's not it, it's not him. He's not Vergil. Dante himself has established it the best − he killed it and the part of Vergil it represented. It's not anymore. The Angelo has been dealt with as far as corporeal existence is concerned, and that's what he's got to be concerned with. He's inside the house, the hall looks the way it did to it but in color and the color is black because others have evaporated in the fire and furniture's gone, he's fine; won't allow the rest of his brother to be overturned by the corruption ever again; refuses to let the angel be fleshed out of his own fears by cowering in front of them. Mundus is waiting.

Mundus' spirit is overwhelming at this range to begin with. On the other side of the drapes it's oppressive enough in itself, the size of a planet, but having had his mind invaded by him electrifies his nerves further. Dante's spine is jumping in an attempt to shake off the dregs clinging to the corners of his consciousness; he's unclean, the tentacles probing him might be gone but the presence keeps being loud. Why, he knows just the thing to get rid of it.

Open the blinds, tear off the bandage. Dante made his choice in front of the Angelo. He chooses to see.

It's decisively not-dark.

At first it seems he's been instantly blinded by the sight of the emperor on his throne, coals under his feet and a sky of mist above him, which is all things considered a smaller surprise than it ought to. Would be a very Mundus thing to do, wouldn't it? It's just the radiance, though. Takes a while to get used to the way it's searing a mark onto his retinas. There's a throat-deep growl and some bombs going off, and although it's an absolute mind-fuck to state the feral sounds are coming from Vergil, they remind Dante he should consider obeying his instincts in turn and doing crap like blinking every once in a while.

In terms of the visuals, he gets accustomed to Mundus' current looks quick enough. Mallet had him in two flavors: the younger but not-that-young version that had an intact body and face, which, now that he thinks of it, was a bit derpy, a great showcase for those kuros and kore sculptures with their unsettlingly deranged archaic smiles. The prettier shell was for show, though, hindered his ability to move. It held the older one stashed away inside, likewise vaguely Greek from what he could tell − Father had left it in less than mint condition. Vergil could tell him which bearded god, Zeus, Poseidon or a more obscure deity, the knockoff would come the closest to if he wasn't so bent on blasting it to smithereens at sight. Anyway. After the island, he's had a makeover. Mundus mark III is shiny, albeit what gleams most is his beauty and he's not even Dante's type at all. Aging in reverse, his features are almost teenaged now, which fits the sullen expression better. While the light that beams into the room from nowhere isn't black, shadows turn white when they're cast by his bulk. Makes the statue he found seated in the cradle of Mallet's ionic columns seem impure; the stone used to have a natural off-white ivory hue with its greys and yellows, yet present Mundus is whiter than white.

Somehow, it occurs to him now of all times that in one sense, Mundus made his perfect little soldier into an image of himself, unwittingly deifying Vergil into what he considers faultless. Free from faults and everything else.

The spell is broken by a blitz. Vergil, who is passing the remains of the staircase to the left, hurls a shapeless burst of energy at the face. Mundus raises a shield to absorb it. Right!

Without an invitation or even a polite greeting, Dante enters the fray, dressed in his scales. The sheer audacity of the petty prince erecting his giant seat straight in the middle of downstairs living room (a replica of it, but it looks _exactly the way_ he remembers it being when he left) and its chandeliers and the former haven of the sofas and in front of the biggest fucking family portrait in the entire house, the one made by a famous painter and one that Eva must have paid a fortune for, now crooked and darkened because Mundus' troops torched it --

In the very beginning, letting off steam feels good. Great, even: Dante cleaves a flying orb in two with Rebellion, switches to guns due to the broadsword seeming too slow to match his indignation, wades through the lightning, abandons the girls to parry a stiff laser beam, puts up a guard. This gets him to the foot of the throne eventually. Miffed at how much effort it's taken him, he readies himself to launch projectiles of his own and gets promptly thrown on his ass. It's a reoccurring theme. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to strike a stationary target, jesus.

It could be therapeutic. He's missed this more than he can say. There are legions of dumb figures of speech he could dredge up, he won't. They fight. The only memory Dante has of them since they were kids. Fighting each other, Arkham, the corruption eating Vergil inside, now their fate. The problem with getting what you want is getting what you want: technically, it's similar to giving Lady's old man a beating, never mind that it's wrong to fight with Vergil like this is because he barely is Vergil. As Dante stepped into the room, he was making gnarring sounds one could imagine the Angelo spewing out, had its creator not sewn its mouth shut with metal. His projectiles are too amorphous to be called balls, Yamato is nowhere to be seen, he's doing his best to get near time and time again when it's clearly an ineffective approach. There's absolutely no sense of refinement nor self-protection in anything he does and it's painful to observe; he throws himself at the enemy with relentlessly reckless abandon, not even trying to avert most of the hostile fire; the rays singe his tail; the air is filled with the smell of burning flesh; he misses his counterattack, meets a wall, gets up, lather rinse repeat. It's not going well.

An upside: Mundus isn't taunting Vergil with words because it's no fun to bully a feral demon. Unfortunately, downsides make a longer list. Barring the “I don't like this because Vergil's acting funny” issue, the main gripe is the conclusion, getting more obvious by the minute. Their glorious last stand against the root of all evil − this is what its reality looks like, it's shit. Dante gets it's a sales pitch or a children's tale. The sons of Sparda set aside their differences to save the world, and through the obstinate power of brotherly love slash rivalry, the devil gets its due. That's the description in the brochure. Highly unrealistic − yet it worked out with Arkham for a bit, and that's why the optimism has stuck around nevertheless. He's flunking the class.

In actual Hell, there are two separate fights going on. They are not a team, united against a common enemy if nothing else. Not like any of it makes a difference, Dante thinks as Mundus shoves him into dirt after yet another failed attempt at finding something to sink his blade into, his shoulder dislocating with a crunch. Seems that the evil has achieved immortality − or at least invincibility, which is the same thing, really − after its defeat against Sparda, so what use is it to persist? Pride, his but more importantly that of his lineage, demands it and forces him to drag his corpse to the finish line, but there is little point to the exercise. Hey, he gets to die the way he lived. Here's to hoping Mundus will inform him when he decides to stop toying with his prey like back on Mallet, _What is the matter? It is time to end your pitiful life now_ and all, because he's starting to fear he'll pass out before that happens and boy if it wouldn't be embarrassing.

They're not winning. Since their onslaught has no visible effect apart from making their foe maneuver his hands and head a bit to block them and retaliate, it would even be prudent to say they're actively losing. What hope could they positively have if Vergil's full-blown kamikaze bombing is water off his back? At first Dante could blame teething problems. Tastes the blood, tries to devise a plan. “Stay mad, remember wrath but don't let it consume you” seems like a sound strategy when it becomes apparent putting all his energy into one hit would be a waste of expensive effort, but it's difficult to remain angry if you get too tired and aren't built for attrition. They're not winning.

It's such a bad way to go. Frustration is boiling up: Mundus is fucking_ sitting_ there. The statue might even be laughing − it's hard to tell because he hasn't left Dante's head once he entered it in the foyer and because his own grunts, ragged breathing and jerky pulse combined with Vergil's mindless snarling ensure he can't exactly take a break to ponder upon the issue over tea. It could be that his memory's acting up and hence he's hearing things, who knows.

“How much longer are you going to keep lazing around on your ass, Mundus? Come on, let's have some fun,” Dante shouts. Rehashing Mallet dialog evokes no reaction, other than a meteor erupting too close for comfort. Might have preferred the mocking.

They fight.

Has the Sparda blood truly been spoiled over the ages, that is the question. Why anyone would expect a different outcome when the Legendary Knight himself died trying is a better one. By now, it's a hobby for his sibling, picking up battles that are impossible for him to win and at some point even to survive. Geez, Dante just drinks himself into stupor when he's bored.

He gathers himself up from the slump he's made on the floor and checks up on his twin because he sure as hell isn't watching his six himself. Yep, still going at it, currently at ground level and making passes at the legs because there's a gash in his left wing that's yet to be healed, apparently. The slug of energy he's aiming at Mundus' extra eye is looking really lousy too; seeing that the biggest blast Dante could harbor didn't put a dent on him even when he nailed the aim, this tap will at best make him a little cranky. Yeah, he observes how it's missing the mark by a mile as well, meets the surface of Mundus' cheekbone instead of the intended spot on the forehead and, wait, the fuck?, and blows it up.

Well.

Mundus lets out a resounding grunt when his face cracks like an egg or a skull, louder than his yell or Vergil dropping to the ground thanks to a late hit. It's not just the cheek that splits apart from the cumulative power of their offences as the straw that finally breaks the back gains critical mass; the fragmentations spread to his extremities and stomach wildfire-fast until he's become an eerie replication of Vergil's injuries in Argosax land, the difference being that there's no darkness peeking through his fissures. Out streams light instead, white with a yellowish tint.

For a beat, everything from the lone fire going on in the corner to Vergil's frantic pulse is frozen. Not over, Dante manages to tell himself, not yet. Skin or a helmet − it's a layer, something lurks beneath. Then the porcelain splinters fall off.

The exposed tissue releases a cloud of pungent gas. The reeking is new, its source isn't. Déjà-vu. Dante is greeted by the disfigured creature he once left to rot, which is a rather literal description with the orange flesh and all, dotting the stony body he mangled to honor a proud family tradition. A curious piece of additional damage is that Mundus appears to be missing two fingers on his left hand, which in itself is a variation of the fabled red right hand. Corruption-black from fingertips to armpit, its texture is replicating the fibers of the Angelo's plating as it inspects the bared visage in stunned silence. True to his last appearance on the island, his left eye has shattered and spongy brain-like tissue is pushing out of the socket. Disgusting. For the briefest of seconds Dante's hit by a sense of poetic justice, that he has been the one to blind it. A pity he doesn't get to admire his handiwork.

At the swing of an inky hand, Vergil starts convulsing. Mundus' manipulation of him is similar to what the raven did to slap him awake; as his fist clenches and his third eye presses the branding iron of the three circles on him, the hissing and writhing get more grotesque. It doesn't last long, the torture. Mundus stands to extend the arm to its full length and shakes the floor with a roar. Then he severs it from the shoulder by laser. Dante watches the appendage burst when the impact of the landing catches up with it, a pool of ichor stains the soil, doesn't know what to think of anything anymore.

Blue and white re-emerge in the darkness. Vergil gasps; forcibly drawn out of his feral form, he also sheds his devil. When Dante rushes to him, automatically switching bodies on his coattails, not stopping to calculate how long losing a limb is going to keep their foe preoccupied, he scowls at the help he's offered and hoist himself up on his own.

Thus they enter a still phase in the fight. Mundus is starting to come to, judging by the way he's stopped making all kinds of interesting white noises that barrage the combat zone with their boom. Dante is out of the loop. Vergil dusts his coat. His stare has been glued to enemy the entire time he's been sentient and it's not coming off when they're spoken to.

“Sons of Sparda,” Mundus, high and mighty as a king despite the raggedness, addresses them at last, actually speaking and not injecting his words into their heads for once. The acknowledgement grates against Dante's nerves. Granting them the courtesy of an origin only when they can fight back, is he? What a piece of shit.

“I have faced Sparda and prevailed. What makes you think you, human excrement filling your veins, could do what his blood was too weak to accomplish?”

Nice to see he's still bad at this crap, being intimidating during a battle. (Mundus is, in fact, good at intimidation, but only after he has won, or lost.)

Vergil spits on the ground. His contempt is somewhat tainted by the fluid being more blood than saliva, but he's not one to let that slow him down any: he cants his chin up and unsheathes Yamato so defiantly the slight trembling of his hands is easy to overlook. “You have no power over me, Mundus. You just dispelled the last chain you had on me because you are not in control. Try as you might, you cannot take this,” he says and triggers, continuing with a resonant voice “away. I paid a heavy price for it and it is _mine_.”

“**I have been watching you since you were born, even before. Your resolution neither suits you nor makes any difference; I know your every weakness**,” Mundus replies nonverbally. Show-off. The headache is going to be epic, Dante just knows.

Vergil's rage is cold and quiet.

“Oh, but I know you too,” he says. The tension in the air snaps like glass and freezes over. His tone is controlled ever so carefully, cruel, stabilizes the fingers around the katana. So much hate compressed into a single breath. His unmoving face contorts with it at some remote quantum level under the solid ice, so it only reaches his eyes, makes them insane with it.

Dante is terrified of him.

“I know your pathetic greed,” Vergil says. “I know your vainglory, how you operate, how wasteful you are with your resources. You told me everything I need to know − and I will use it all to rip you apart and destroy you and, if I am still standing when I am done with you, I will tear down your empire just to see it burn, salt the earth. Watch me.”

In some universe, he's less serious about it, makes it sound like a cliché.

Brushing off the shivers he's so close to breaking into, Dante tries to join the conversation. Being the third wheel is taking the wind out of his sails, nobody needs that. “Besides, last time Vergil was wounded and alone, wasn't he? There's two of us now, Mundus: who doesn't stand a chance here is you.”

Vergil's posture startles. He turns towards him and probably gets a crick in his neck for the trouble, having completely forgotten that he brought him along. Really busting those balls here, bro. His appraisal is swift and expressionless. The weight of it makes him feel like he's revealed too much and it's as unfair as it always is when he's said nothing of note. The heart in his sleeve, transparent.

“Yes.” With this lackluster war cry, Vergil's had his fill of playing civil. 

Upon the first hail of astral blades unleashed on the target in a fashion that tastes a tad unceremonious after the previous dramatics, Dante's roped into thinking it could be alright. Incredible. Seeing the correct turquoise of the specters could be described as the miniature Force Edges pin cushioning Dante's stomach instead of the mark and filling it with hot relief − it's him, in charge of himself again. What being in command of his faculties makes Vergil lack in speed, it makes up in stealth and agility: he gets all the way to Mundus' back unharmed, makes him bellow in fury even though there are zero openings for a strike, and by the time Dante's senses have kicked in enough for him to hulk out too, he's putting up a force shield like the old vet he is to compensate for losing his balance due to the orbs flung at his way. Dante loses track of him when he launches into assault himself, which is good, he's teleporting and being as lethal as he was in Fortuna in general. Takes Dante back to the Arkham business, predictably, he can't help it. It's tasting sour. There's a lot that could and maybe should be said about the occasion, how it gave them room for intimacy that may have been accidental. Currently relevant: he can't afford the reminiscence and they don't have the luxury of playing around. It would still be fine if they weren't so devastatingly disadvantaged. 

Sure, Mundus may have lost face and has to resort to outright avoiding attacks by moving around the field (slimy bastard, that combo was _so close_ to completion --). He's no less impenetrable for it. They fight to lose, Mundus starts to fight smarter. Flying consumes more power so he stays earth-bound while sons of Sparda retain their sovereignty in air and feel every flap of their wings in their tired bones. Exertion makes everything hazy, consciousness is slipping away with the will. They're exhausted. Mundus seems it happen, has their cards read, decides to up the ante.

Shoving them both away from him with a burst of lava from who knows where, shitfuck stings like a bitch against his stomach motherfucking dark matter shit, Lucifer makes a complicated series of gestures with his remaining hand and sets the walls around him on fire. Regular blazing would be a decent cause for grief already; Mundus adds a nice personal touch to it. The light streaming upon them turns ghost blue.

And so the manor burns with Vergil's flames. Great! Awesome, brilliant, wonderful, absolutely fantastic. It's not enough that oxygen is running out at an alarming pace and the furnace heat is reaching infernal levels − well done, Mundus. In addition, the move seems to make Vergil distraught. Reminds Dante of how he was subdued by his own weapons post his fall into the underworld, if the vision even was true. Maybe he shares the waking nightmares of the funeral pyre their home became. The guilt, sees it unfold again, by a him he can't control. The building is collapsing around them and the both of them are bleeding profusely at their limits, between the patches of scaly keratin that are trying to heal from the burns. Vergil is bleeding red, every stroke of his wings more agitated than the last, veils his surroundings in crimson red droplets to reflect inner turmoil on the outside. He bleeds a lot more when he collides with a boulder. It sounds painful, more so than just the fact that he failed to dodge it.

Chipping Mundus' defenses away brick by brick won't cut it. Time's leaking out of the glass, the last grains could be counted by eye.

Where is the grand plan, Vergil?

Why don't you know how to defeat him, Vergil?

Why are you completely unprepared, Vergil?

But it's too late to be angry.

A beam comes down from the perpetually invisible roof. It's sudden: still can't see the ceiling due to smoke, granted that it has a natural cause now that white smog is suppressed by dark grey. Dante stumbles. The wood is howling with Eva and Vergil's screams. A new beginning, she said, and then her last word was trembling under the name of her first son. They're never getting out of here.

Dante smites a knee, gets his lungs emptied in turn, coughs and chokes.

“**What do you have to gain here, Nelo? You cannot win when your actions have cost you everything; you've lost and there is nothing for you to live for. Dante will not save you by killing you anymore. You betrayed him once already**.”

What a time to be alive and to develop sort of functioning telepathy again. Vergil cries out, the lightning piercing his thigh makes the private pain common. Dante's grip falters on Rebellion's hilt, Mundus' taunt has Vergil shaken and has shaken his twin in the mirroring blade. On the ledge and tipping over, he should become explosive, not passive. The only thing worse than Vergil with a purpose he's willing to do anything for must be Vergil without any motivation. Where is it, why can't Dante see it, why is he forgetting Nelo is dead? Does he want to win?

Mundus claimed: he has betrayed you once already.

Dante needs a distraction, pronto. Vergil's gutturals and the thinness of his breathing are worrisome and his doubt is not a safe place to be in, so he sends a sword formation at Mundus' upper eye and steals closer to engage him.

His half-assed plan of knocking Mundus down a peg by landing a hit where it'd at least hurt his vanity flies out of the window when hears a particularly disturbing bang, looks down to make sure Vergil's still kicking. For the moment, yeah. His focus falters. Huh. Right away, he realizes it'll cost him, but fuck it, they're a family of magpies and what he sees is shiny.

From his current location above shoulder and the arm that's trying to capture him, Dante has a view to Mundus' chest. The angle is weird but it works to his advantage. Up front, the hole in it isn't that interesting, rocks and shit, more orange. It's an obvious structural weakness, surely, any idiot can tell that, but making closer acquaintance with the area is not appealing for a myriad of reasons. What stands out is the hunk of marble in the middle − it's sign language for “here lies nothing but solid stone, don't even bother”, and they've been listening. This brief glance he gets reveals the cavern Sparda punched into Mundus is a little deeper than expected, that there's something at the back, in its depths.

Now, Dante has a gift for picking up skills with ease and coming up with stupid solutions to stupid problems: how else could he deal with the puzzles villainous types adore? It could be that he's just really bad at thinking stuff through and being content with going on his instincts alone like an even dumber animal. He doesn't think so. There is something − small, a glimpse of black intertwined into purple that's so dark it might as well be black too, something shriveled, throbbing, a surface that shines like an oil rainbow when light hunts it down. 

Could be nothing. It isn't.

“Vergil! The chest, go for the chest!” he yells, loud as he can. Naturally, this gives Mundus an opening. Paint yourself a target, get swatted like a fly − his sides crunch both at the contact and the landing. Trying not to suffocate on his knocked-out teeth, Dante figures the viciousness of Mundus' reaction cements his hunch.

Vergil seems to reach the same conclusion. “I did betray him,” he says quietly. How his voice carries through the rush of blood between Dante's temples is a mystery. He can't exactly aim his ears towards him yet, his nerves kind of have to reconnect again, though he does appreciate the attempt at diverting Mundus' attention if that's what him speaking is. Healing won't be an instant thing, he'll be out awhile. What hinders his ability to estimate how many bones have been broken in the process, his body hurts all over so yeah lots, is that he thinks his brains are swollen, must be the concussion. Vergil says: “I did, and that is what will destroy the both of us, you and I.”

There's a detonation, approximately at shoulder level, Dante's busted skull throbs to the rhythm of it. Followed by the sound of Vergil darting towards him (what, no, wrong direction you idiot, Mundus is other way round!), it's probably a ruse. Dante busts a gut stumbling to his feet, his body knitting itself together in slow agony. Once he's testing if his knees are functional, his brother is just a few steps away from him already, flicking a wrist to set off another explosion. Well, this ain't good.

On cue, Vergil drops his fancy special DT. An alarm horn starts to blare inside Dante's head; this gets drowned out a hail of dimensional slashes meeting their target and making the space they're carving through let out warped screeches. Dante has jokingly christened the move set the Judgement Cut. You know, it seemed fitting with his attitude, the superiority complex. Also the cutting, there's plenty of that involved. When he recognizes how much energy it takes for Vergil to use it in this magnitude, to keep Mundus busy with attacks rippling on different areas of his body in quick succession, he couldn't be further from kidding around. In simple terms, Vergil has no power left to either sustain his trigger or defend himself.

“What are you --,” Dante begins, still reeling from the knocks he's taken, Vergil's confession, his prophecy of going down together with Mundus. Is he going crazy? Now, of all times? What the fuck is he think-- he's _not _thinking, what the fuck is he playing at?

“There is no time, but,” he says, an apologetic gesture tilting his head. His steps are closing the distance swiftly while his slashes keep distracting the enemy.

Closer. Warmer. “I do not want to lie to you, Dante.” He draws closer until their shoes bump against each other, then places a steadying hand on Dante's hip, and Dante − but that's –, he panics. It doesn't show. His hypnotized body mirrors that of his twin, no longer the twin image of his body; it shifts to a more human form as his mouth scrambles for oxygen and syllables, tries to warm him, beat some sense into him because this is suicidal, getting one up on him by making him freak out isn't worth the risk even if it's the final score. The hand on his hip, warmer, he does nothing.

What Vergil says next gets lost on Dante. The sentence is short. He makes out fragments: maybe “warn”, “might”, “limb”. Possibly. Definitely an “I” in there. He discards Dante's fear, shrugs his comment off as more or less a loss and speaks.

Again, the sounds playing on the background nearly cancel Vergil's breathless yet calm voice. Now he leans forward, finds Dante's ear. “I am going to stab you now,” he whispers, his mouth trembling, light against the shell. It is not someone who is asking for permission or forgiveness. Stating the obvious. Informative value. A foregone conclusion.

“Hey, wait --" _no, wait,_ _don't do anything stupid. _Dante's reaction time is shit, shot to hell, useless useless useless and what would he even do, because this is where Vergil kisses him.

Vergil kisses him with an open mouth and a closed expression that Dante only sees when he detaches himself a moment later. His lips are soft and slick, wet when they meet his, but there is something pained in the way he melts into it, as if he's killing off a part of himself, breaking a vow, disintegrating into the sigh that unravels against Dante's mouth as his blood masks his taste and billows his scent all over him, blends into the May roses Dante's still carrying in his hair, too far to go back now. His tongue brushing his lips, a flux of warmth that spreads through Dante in a flash, faster than the dread. Vergil knows, he must hear Dante's heartbeat on his lips. They hesitate too long to part. Reciprocate, he gives himself away. Voice his apologies into him, the sudden impulses that fill his mouth, pelt against his skin from within, incomplete. The contact is a brief lick of heat on him, a shiver Vergil voices silently; he feels it acutely but barely gets to feel it before his mouth slides away. His utterly blank gaze slips up towards Dante's and his tongue curls inside his own mouth, touches his teeth, perhaps in the way it would have in his. But he won't look at his eyes anymore. Methodical honesty wipes his childish flush away to reveal that the steel has never begun to thaw, Dante has just been misled. 

Vergil kisses him for the first time again. Vergil kisses him, but more importantly, Vergil distracts him, so smoothly that when Dante realizes he has done it, when his words truly register and the message hits home, it is far too late. A seal on a promise: _I will keep your secrets, take them to my grave. This I swear to you._

“I am sorry,” Vergil says, his voice serene under the crumbling junction of memories and reality, the astral storm thundering in the distance.

Vergil distracts him. Then Vergil stabs him.

And it bears the fruit of deceit,

ruddy and sweet to eat;

soft deceitful wiles. Of course.

Yamato tends to be cool when she returns into Dante, even when her owner is spiraling. Back at Temen-ni-gru, for example, she was faithful in her calmness and radiated it inside him while Vergil was impatient and raw. _Why isn__'t__ this working_, and Dante laughed at him even if it hurt him to see. But she too was turned against her wielder once. Dante has felt her weeping inside Vergil's head.

When she tears into him, she's suffering too. As the tip of the katana pierces skin, Dante knows she'll be a foreign object inside his body, when she enters his chest that it's wrong, greets his back that he has no words for it because Vergil is never unwelcome. She's in panic, and like this, they'll only share their terror through agony or steal one another's grief.

They miss the rain. It's worse like this, to be able to watch Vergil's face as he does it. Imagine what he looked like, filled with hatred so divine it scalded him more viscerally than holy water. _It remains to be seen when it kills one of us_. To him, it's a practical matter. Surgery. He's mercilessly precise, puncturing a lung yet bypassing other major organs and arteries. The katana thrusts in, twists around to paralyze him with pain and quickly retreats. It could be redundant today as well. From the way it lingers, Dante might be unable to move from the kiss alone. Trust his dear sibling to be thorough in any case.

As a bubble of blood bursts inside Dante's mouth, Vergil pulls Yamato out of his breast and a new bubble forms, this time around his entire body. The last glimpse of his face Dante catches is devoid of emotions; he turns his back swiftly with the kind of finality that doomed them at the tower, sheathes Yamato, triggers and doesn't look back once. His scales glimmer as he takes off.

In short, it's one of those times Dante should go after him. As if. If only.

His second trick and parting gift is a variation of the walls he built in Fortuna to guide Dante. The stuff is still see-through and whatnot, what he cares about is that the balloon is so thick it refuses to budge when he throws himself at it. It's oppressive when he summons Rebellion and it's durable enough to take the beating. It's big enough for him to stand in as it holds him high above the floor and it's translucent so that he's got a full view of the battle he's no longer a part of.

A small crease in his memories. Misguided chivalry, a war going on around him: it occurs to him. The first time around, he survived in the safety of the closet. It was nothing but wood and he still dreams of how close the flames got, yet he got out alive. It takes energy to maintain such a shield; was it a leftover from Sparda, something Eva kept stashed away in a locket, or was it Vergil, he wonders as he stops struggling and falls to his knees. It takes energy. The more he resists, the more is used up, and Vergil needs all of it, more than he has, because he's going up against Mundus alone.

Dante is shouting and his lips remember him as they're burning down to bone.

“Vergil! Vergil! No, don't, Vergil, stop! You're insane, let me out, Vergil!”

Back to the beginning. He's forced to watch their future die, destined to become the sole survivor. Removed from the danger and at what cost. This is not the place for some pissing contest, who can climb the fence the fastest or kill the beast, winner gets bragging rights and an honorary mention in his headstone. _Here lies a stubborn bastard. He was born like he died, first. dis manibus._

Should've predicted it. Vergil is batshit crazy, quite literally insane, how on earth does Dante keep forgetting that. If it's what he wants, he'll do whatever he must to distract him, _he knows_, he knows and uses it and knows it would work, he's done it before, always does. Nobody's explained what the business with self-impalement back at the lab was about, but since the stranger fell out of Vergil, who furthermore has a history of split personalities, it's a reasonable assumption to guess he was an alter ego of sorts. He was Vergil enough for it to work, his weighty attention on his mouth, and so was the Angelo. Vergil's not a betting man. It's the oldest trick in the book, he's banking on the fact that Dante just never ever learns.

Jackpot.

Once the instant hysteria subsides enough for Dante to be able to focus at all, the mansion has lost its last walls. For his part, Vergil has lost a wing but managed to bluff Mundus into letting him near. The stub is pumping out more blood rather vigorously, Mundus gets a new paint job. Sticks out of his back like a sore thumb, cut off by the point where it would flare out towards the… thumb of the wing. Takes a while to make sense of the picture. No, it's not Mundus' doing, Dante reasons as Vergil barges inside the chest cavity, no longer dangling from the enemy's grasp. He let himself be caught and then, hmm, freed himself. What is a limb but an acceptable loss? Devious. Under different circumstances, he might admire the resourcefulness.

Vergil, it appears, considers himself disposable. How many times did he have to be told until he believed it, or has he always thought so? It dawns on Dante that he did honor his word to the letter. Admittedly that only applies in the literal sense since Dante didn't get what he was warning him about till now, but to him and his fucked-up morals, it counts. _I have to warn you; I might lose some limbs now_. Something in that vein.

Christ.

Do-it-yourself amputations sting like a bitch. Vergil the walking zombie most likely didn't have full sensation in his extremities while they were travelling the Argosax region, but sacrificing his arm did make him a shivering bundle against Dante's clavicle, resigned but hell-bent on getting his way, perhaps already aware that he'd be back to his bullshit soon, abandoning him. With his brand-new flesh vessel, he ought to be shrieking. Why isn't he? Occam's razor and a monetarily valueless coin say the simplest explanation is that he's indeed screaming, the walls merely insulate sounds. Calming down to test this theory is impossible for Dante, though it seems credible when he observes Mundus' mute roars quake the ground and hears himself breathing. There's a metric ton of ash in the air: a shitty snow globe, merely flipped around. Magical. Dante's perching inside the glass ornament, decoration and a discarded toy, and watching the tempest rage outside.

Watching. There's something in his eye that blurs Vergil's backside, which obscures the action half the time anyway. The other half is spent on Mundus' back when he tosses and turns round his feet, probably trying to get the pest off him somehow. So far, Vergil's been able to answer some of the attacks by zapping him back, but his spells are getting weaker and weaker and his skeleton really shouldn't be that visible. He's got to make way past the clutter to reach the whatever, Dante gets that it's not as easy as plucking out an apple. It's taking too long, though.

There is no warning when his attempts eventually bear fruit. Just a pressure that tautens as suddenly as it dissipates like a plug pulled out of the sink. When Mundus explodes, Vergil has mangled himself into fetal position, the remaining wing curled as a protective barrier. In the grand scheme of things, it's about as effective as a wet paper bag.

When Mundus dies, the bubble bursts.

Vergil falls.

Ah, there goes gravity. With nothing to support him, Dante drops too.

Vergil hits the ground both before and after Dante does, some of the pieces maybe even simultaneously with him. Dante's brains inform that it's raining, body parts instead of water. Blood.

As he rolls over, he's instantly aware of how futile scrambling to the disfigured torso is. Irony has him favored like always: the similarities between Vergil post the fallout and him in the throes of the Styx are eerie. His head is hanging by a thread so Dante has to try and attach it back to the human neck that's missing large chunks of tissue, then prop it up and support it when he holds him. Anchor him down as if he could float away, light as he is with no legs, arms or abdomen to bear down on him. Dante breathes. He feels the flatness of his bare scapulas scraping against his palms. It's a nice contrast to the wetness of flesh that's mostly wanting skin, keeps him grounded.

There's a lot of debris from Mundus' broken chassis scattered around as far as eye can see. Hidden among it are Vergil's kneecaps, forearms, toes, kidneys. Makes for a perverse round of hide and seek or an exemplary page spread for a Wimmelbilderbuch. Find the spleen! Is it lying under Mundus' left hemisphere or taking cover under the roses? Winner gets to dig a hole next the body that gave birth to it. _dis manibus._

Finding him would take ages. It has, hasn't it.

His face is more or less intact and surprisingly, Dante can actually see his heart underneath the remains of his ribcage. Striking resemblance to the Stygian nightmare vision indeed. Simply put − Vergil is in too many pieces for Dante to put together in time even if he used his trigger, for he lost most his fluids many moons ago; Dante has wasted what little time they have on this cheap imitation of a pieta already. He will bleed out.

When his lips spread outwards for a J, a hideous laugh rocks them both. 

“Don't you dare say it --,” Dante wheezes, but Vergil won't obey.

“Jackpot. Dante. I did it.” His gasps nearly blur the message beyond recognition. He always stretches the N in his name a bit. How is he even talking.

(He's had practice, that's the thing. Defiant to the bitter end.)

“We did it,” he insists, giddy, and Dante hates him so much. Very starry-eyed for someone whose gaze doesn't focus properly. The dying fires around them have turned into embers, giving his colorless, drained hide a golden tint. For all he's associated with cold palettes and the pallor of his lies that gain the title of truth by omission, bathed in blue in the hours of the night he was born alone before it switched into a dawn and duals, Eva was onto something when she chose to give him the half of the amulet she did. What is gold? Somber excess, richness of courage, grandeur and elegance and arrogance, passion that draws attention to itself, a center for the lesser alloys to orbit around. But Dante can't see the sun in him anymore.

Dante's hand has silver, the permanent second prize. Silver is patient out of necessity. Dull. Lifeless. Alive only in the moments when it can reflect external light. Vergil is the older one, the original. They both have figured out Dante is merely a failed extension of him a long time ago, but it's hard to digest being such a mess that not even someone like Vergil wants to claim him. Mundus was plain wrong about his place in the universe, yet the knowledge doesn't warrant a triumph.

“Please, stop talking,” he pleads. Why, exactly? It would gain them a second or two at the most, it's pointless. Horror vacui. Fill the moment with speech that counts as physical matter but contains more emptiness. “You have to − you're hurt, it's bad, you've got to spare your strength.”

“For what?” they don't ask because they don't have to. There is no purpose to this.

Delirious Vergil makes a face that conveys joy in some different dimension. Elated as he is with the blood loss, the last of his machinery to function corrects the expression into a grimace. Vergil with a true, genuine, voluntary smile on his face is as beautiful as he is impossible. “Damage done to the flesh --"

Would it kill him to stop making it worse, get it, it's a joke and everything's hilarious.

“Vergil, this isn't funny. It's not a flesh wound, you can't laugh it off!”

“No,” Vergil says and becomes silent. He seems to be grasping the full extent of the situation and tries to tone his reactions down. With a small grunt, the final push, he rearranges his disposition to salute solemnity and drowsiness. The high of shock is dwindling. It isn't satisfying to witness. His mouth, a smile in blood, tightens into a line, his eyes distance themselves further.

“You didn't come all this way here to die, Vergil,” another prayer slips out.

But what if he did?

He doesn't respond.

Dante sees it. Clear as can be. How he genuinely thinks it was worth this. Am I being defeated, say his veins flooding the ground that's halfway to drying, their familiar song, but he's too weak to pretend he's up to the routine otherwise. I can still fight, going unsaid. No regrets.

Vergil, on the contrary, doesn't see much. He's not really looking at Dante. Can't, likely. With the swelling, scorched lashes and other victory trophies, he doesn't detect anything but colors blurring, deformed shapeless shapes in red layers. To him Dante's a shade, and isn't that just sad, so damn tragic. It is − All those years, he'd thought he'd kill to make him feel. The possibility scares him now.

He's rambling.

“You goddamn fucking asshole, you don't get to do this! Vergil, you fuck, stay awake, don't die on me.”

It gets ugly.

“Verge, Vergil − stay with me.” 

There are things I need to ask you.

There are things I have to tell you.

The “I hate you” sits on the tip of his tongue as readily as all his sorrys. The “I love you” sinks into oblivion; Eva is singing a lullaby Dante has forgotten somewhere in its depths,

_We are falling; _

_The light is calling_,

it's just the timber crackling under heat, just the rain. His open secret dies as a secret between them.

“I, will sleep now. Goodnight,” Vergil says sleepily indeed, fading out with his voice. Becomes equal with Nelo in silence, their hard-won peace.

Finally, a body Dante can bury, true red on his palms.

Today, they both get what they need. It's the same as before but for real.

_Tears inside me _

_Calm me down_.

Strange and ironic that it will end the same way.


End file.
